Karate. Surfing. Skateboarding. Sport climbing. With the addition of four new sports (and the return of softball) to the official program of the 2020 Summer Olympics along with the promise of artificial meteor showers, driverless cars and a sizable army of robots, second-time host city Tokyo is already looking to do things a bit differently. And this includes how — and with what — the Games’ most coveted prizes are produced.
You see, Olympic host countries traditionally source the precious metals used to produce the medals from native resources with domestic mining firms donating a bulk of the materials. But as business journal Nikkei Asian Review recently explained, Japan isn’t exactly profuse in natural mineral resources — mining in the Land of the Rising Sun does exist but on a very small scale.
But what Japan does have is a staggering “urban mine” of discarded smartphones, small electronics and home appliances that contain enough precious metals in small amounts to produce all of the medals needed for the Olympic and Paralympic Games and then some.
And so, the sustainability-minded organizers of the Tokyo Games are looking towards Japan’s vast e-waste resources to produce bronze, silver and gold medals, which it should be pointed out, haven’t been crafted from solid gold since the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm. Olympic gold medals are actually produced from silver with a minuscule amount — roughly 1.2 percent — of gold plating added for good measure. Silver medals are indeed just that — pure sterling silver — while bronze medals are also bronze, an alloy composed primarily of copper with a small amount of zinc. Placing monetary values on Olympic medals, a gold medal is worth $548 while a silver medal cashes in at a little under $300. (That layer of real gold, no matter how thin, makes quite the difference). A bronze medal is worth just two bucks and change.
Worth aside, Japan naturally possesses none of these raw materials. Yet the amount of silver and gold contained with its steady stream of e-waste is, as Nikkei reports, roughly equivalent to 22 percent and 16 percent, respectively, of the entire global supply. In fact, the 2012 Summer Olympics in London required the use of 9.6 kg of gold, 1,210 kg of silver and 700 kg to produce that games’ medals. In 2014, the amount of these precious metals recovered from trashed small electronics in Japan were equal to 143 kg of gold, 1,566 kg of silver and a staggering 1,112 tons of copper.
It shouldn’t be a problem then, right?
Well, it’s complicated.
To read the full story, visit http://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/blogs/japan-hopes-turn-junked-electronics-olympic-gold.