But Tokyo 2020 might also showcase sustainability, with a report from Nikkei suggesting the medals on offer in Japan will be made using electronic waste. Collecting enough materials might be a problem because numerous electronics are used to make even more electronics. In 2014 alone Japan gleaned 143kg of gold, 1,566kg of silver and 1,112 tons of copper from tossed-away gadgets.
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Overall, the gold in Japan’s electronics is equivalent to 16% of the world’s total reserves.
Nikkei Asian Review describes participants at the 10 June 2016 meeting as including officials of the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic organising committee, the Ministry of the Environment and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, as well as executives from mobile phone company NTT DoCoMo, precious metals company Tanaka Kikinzoku Kogyo and recycling companies. It makes sense and won’t take away from the value of the medals because only a small percentage of the materials used are actually the precious metals.
The London Olympic Games in 2012 used 9.6 kg of gold, 1,210 kg of silver and 700 kg of copper to make their medals.
We saw from the teaser show involving augmented reality and Super Mario that there’s more to the Olympic motto of “Discover Tomorrow”, and it looks like that could stretch to the medals too. Japan should have no problem sourcing recycled materials.
Japan, like most countries, has laws created to stop discarded electronics ending up in landfill, with ambitious targets of 1kg per head per year cited.
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It is estimated that 650,000 tons of consumer electronics are discarded every year in Japan, though only 100,000 tons is collected for recycling. In order to collect enough materials for the “urban mine” of e-waste to cover the Olympic medal project, a group of Olympic organizers, government officials, and company executives is looking for companies to “propose a concrete collection proposal” that can be implemented in the near future. In 2013, Japan’s almost 128 million strong population unloaded 17.3 kilograms of electronic waste per person, and about 556,000 tons of e-waste were collected and treated in Japan.
