The 2020 Olympics is set to take place in Tokyo, Japan, and the latest word is that the tournament’s medals will be made out of old and discarded smartphones.
The Olympics’ organizing committee in Tokyo began a recycling program last year to collect old smartphones for making medals for the 2020 Olympics, as smartphones are made out of several precious metals such as gold, silver, and bronze.
The committee has collected around 47,488 tons of old and useless smartphone waste, comprising about 5 million smartphones. The smartphones for the venture were donated by the Japanese citizens at the NTT Docomo stores.
Additionally, the old smartphones were collected from post offices and other public buildings through the collection stations situated there.
While 93.3% of the collection of the 30.3kg gold target and 85.4% of the 4,100kg silver target has been completed, the committee’s goal to collect 2,700kg of bronze was already achieved back in June 2018.
The Tokyo committee for the 2020 Olympics is still accepting the smartphones for the medals and will end the program on March 31st, 2019, following which the designs for the Olympics and Paralympics medals will be unveiled.
Furthermore, the committee is certain it will achieve the decided target by the deadline.