TOKYO – Officials in Japan hope the medals awarded to athletes at Tokyo 2020 will be made out of recycled smartphones and other gadgets.
The Olympic organizing committee says that Tokyo 2020 will be the first time that the medals will be forged from materials inside old gadgets.
According to The Japan Times, organizers have asked the Japanese public to donate their old phones to be used for the creation of the gold, silver, and bronze medals. They’ll need to manufacture 5,000 medals, which will require the collection of eight tons of metal.
Organizers are saying that the gold medals will be made from 100 percent recycled material.
To collect the necessary gadgets, the organizing committee is partnering with NTT Docomo (Japan’s biggest telecom) and the Japan Environmental Sanitation Center to gather gadgets. Japanese citizens can dump off their old-ass phones at collection boxes across 2,400 NTT Docomo stores across Japan.
