© Medals for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games unveiled during a ceremony marking one year before the start of the games in Tokyo on July 24, 2019. (BEHROUZ MEHRI/AFP/Getty Images Tokyo 2020’s organizing committee will transform old smartphones, laptops, and digital cameras into a true treasure. The medals for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games have just been unveiled, and they are masterpieces of recycled materials. The gold, silver, and bronze medals are all made entirely from materials extracted from discarded and obsolete smartphones and other electronic devices that were donated for this purpose. The Olympic organizing committee in Japan has been collecting electronic devices since 2017 in order to extract enough material to make 5,000 medals. Municipal offices across Japan acted as collection centers and, by October 2018, had received nearly 48,000 tons of old phones, digital cameras, handheld games, and laptops. From a press release : "The targeted amount of bronze – some 2,700kg – was already extracted from these by June of last year. By October 2018, 28.4kg of gold (93.7% of the targeted 30.3kg) and 3,500kg of silver (85.4% of the targeted 4,100kg) had been sourced from the donated devices." Inhabitat reports that Olympic […]
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