Japan Presents Olympic Awards Made from Recycled Gadgets

About the plans of 2020 Olympic Games organizing committee to make medals out of unserviceable smartphones and tablet PCs. The organizers have already decided on award designs and measured the quantity of the material collected.

In the spring of 2017, the Land of the Rising Sun launched its Tokyo 2020 Medal project. It involved the collection of old electronic devices, which the organizers decided to use to make Olympic awards from.

Municipalities put in charge of collecting the gadgets have managed to get 80 thousand tons of them. Among the project participants was NTT DoCoMo store chain. Its contribution  totaled 6.1 million devices. 32 kg of gold, 3.5 thousand kg of silver and 2.2 thousand kg of bronze were salvaged from the telephones collected. These materials were more than enough to make about 5 thousand awards of various denominations.

The gadgets left after the completion of the project will now be recycled in accordance with local electronic equipment disposal laws.