The medals for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics will be forged from recycled metal from old mobile phones and appliances donated by the general public to give them a sense of direct involvement in the Games, organisers said on Wednesday (February 1).
“Through recycling, not just using and throwing away, we can limit our use of the worlds indispensable resources. I think it is a truly wonderful plan,” Koji Murofushi, Tokyo 2020 Sports Director and a gold medalist in the hammer throw at the 2004 Athens Games, told a news conference.
“People can delight in the feeling that this medal was made by contributions from all of us,” he added.
The move is also an effort to promote sustainability and save money for the summer sports extravaganza that at one point was estimated to cost over 3 trillion yen ($26.5 billion), although organisers late last year unveiled a budget of $16.8 billion.
The Tokyo 2020 organising committee hopes to gather as much as eight tonnes of metal – 40 kg of gold, 2,920 kg of silver and 2,994 kg of bronze – from outdated mobile phones and small household appliances to be given by people throughout Japan.
This effort, the first of its kind for the Olympics, will ultimately result in two tonnes of metal, enough to make all 5,000 Olympic and Paralympic medals.
From April, collection boxes will be installed in local offices and the stores of telecoms firm NTT DoCoMo Inc, which will partner with environmental firmJapan Environmental Sanitation Center for the project.
The collection would end when the required eight tonnes were gathered, although further details still needed to be worked out, organisers said.
(REUTERS)
