Next year the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games are held and the organizing committee wanted to show the new medals just today that are missing 365 days before the start of the Games. The most outstanding feature of the medals is that they will be made of precious metals extracted from recycled electronic devices, such as iPhone and iPad.
During the month of February, the committee decided that the medals would use recycled metals and promoted an initiative that invited Japanese citizens to recycle their old electronic devices at specific collection points. Then they extracted the most valuable materials to use them for the 5,000 medals that will win the winning athletes from July 2020.
Medals made with recycled devices
The electronic devices have a large number of components that use precious metals such as gold, silver or bronze used in the Olympic medals. The recycling of this type of devices is a great proposal since every year millions of devices are discarded, Apple itself insists that you recycle your old iPhone, iPad or Mac.
The objective was to reach eight tons of precious metals recycled from electronic devices to manufacturing the medals. Thanks to the participation of Japanese citizens and the collaboration of several companies, these medals have been made that athletes can win next year.
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The bronze medals are made with an alloy of copper and zinc, the silver ones have this material exclusively and the gold medals are 6 grams gold plated with silver. They have a diameter of 85 millimeters and a thickness of 7.7 millimeters at its thinnest part. The design was carried out by Junichi Kawanishi, who turned out to be the winner of a contest in which nearly 400 designers participated.
