Provided that Japan still exists and North Korea haven’t fired another ruddy missile at it, then they’ll be holding the Olympics in 2020. The medals, which usually cost a small fortune to create, are going to be made in a very different way this time.
Members of Japan’s Olympic organising committee are looking to use your old smartphone as part of the medals. Our phones contain some precious and rare medal. I’m talking about platinum, palladium, lithium, nickel and stuff like that. So, they’re looking to recycle phones and use them in the medals.
During the 2016 Rio Olympics each medal weighed 500g each and they were 1cm thick. More than 5,000 medals were made for the Olympics last year and is properly expensive. The gold medals, though, were actually mostly sterling silver. The bronze ones were predominantly copper.
Reducing electronic waste is definitely going to help promote recycling, and as long as there’s the minimum amount of gold in a gold meal, the athletes will be none the wiser.
Anyway, here’s a video telling you all about it…