Tokyo 2020 Olympic Medals to be Made from Smartphones

Tokyo Olympic medals in 2020 will be made from recycled smartphone and electronic gadgets according to a report from Nikkei.

Urban Mine

Organizers of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics are coming up with a plan to use gold, silver and bronze derived from its "Urban Mine" which refers to Japan's massive pile of old smartphones, 2G cellphones and other consumer electronics discarded by the Japanese every year.

Environmentally Friendly Olympics

Hoping to give the 2020 Tokyo Olympics a strong environmental theme, the organizers are hoping to recycle Japan's massive electronic gadgets pile believing that inside them are more than enough precious metals to produce gold, silver and bronze medals that all the athletes in the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games would need.

Government and Business

Olympic organizers shared the information to Nikkei stating that the environmental-friendly idea was heavily discussed last June 10 in Tokyo by the Japanese ministry of environment, the Tokyo Metropolitan government, company executives from telecom company NTT DoCoMo and precious metals company Tanaka Kikinzoku Kogyo and Olympic and Paralympic Officials.

World's Largest Gold Reserves

Japan's Olympic Organizers are confident that the plan will push through stating that during the 2012 London Olympics used 9.6kg of gold, 1,210kg of silver and 700kg of copper- which is the main component of bronze - to create the Olympic medals of the athletes. In comparison, Japan possessed 143kg of gold, 1,566kg of silver and 1,112 tons of copper recovered from discarded consumer electronics in 2014.

Nikkei reported that the entire amount of gold and silver in Japan's urban mine of consumer electronics is equal to 16 percent and 22 percent of the world's total supply exceeding the reserves of any nation on earth.