The organizers for the Tokyo games crammed the works into a brief two-minute film montage before Abe’s appearance: athletes participating in more than a dozen sports, as iconic Japanese images like Tokyo Tower, cherry blossoms, a bullet train, Tokyo Bay Bridge and the famous “scramble” intersection in Shibuya whiz by.
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Japanese authorities are apparently looking into tapping the country’s “urban mine”, instead of mining for new materials.
Japan’s e-waste “mine” is equivalent to 16 percent of the world’s gold and 22 percent of the world’s silver.
It is mandatory to recycle cars, home appliances and personal computers in Japan. In 2014 alone, the massive heap of old cell phones and other electronics was estimated to contain 315 pounds of gold, 3,450 pounds of silver and 2,450 pounds of copper. From about 650,000 tons a year, less than 100,000 tons is retrieved under the small home appliance recycling law. About 30 percent of the silver used came from leftover mirrors and X-Ray plates.
“A collection system should be created by the private sector, and central and local governments should be in charge of publicizing such private services”, Takeshi Kuroda, president of ReNet Japan Group, which works together with Olympic Games organizers to make medals from e-waste, said in a statement. For the just-concluded 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, a total of 5,130 medals – the heaviest medals in Olympic history – were produced by the Brazilian Mint.
However, Japan has not yet developed a system for collecting discarded electronics. “If this public-private cooperation progresses, the collection of electronic waste should also progress”.
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All sounds good. Here’s hoping that Tokyo’s ambitious dreams of green medal-dom aren’t abandoned amidst controversy like the original Olympic Stadium and official logo have been.
