2020 Tokyo Olympics: Japan to produce medals, podiums, track suits out of e-waste

NEW DELHI: The upcoming 2020 Tokyo Olympics in July will have many interesting eco-friendly firsts for sportspersons and audiences.

These will include major usage of timber instead of plastic or steel and recycled water in the newly re-built National Stadium (新国立競技場 Shin kokuritsu kyōgijō) – the main venue for the games in Tokyo.

The victory ceremony podiums and Olympic Torch Relay uniforms will be made out of recycled plastic, and gold, silver and bronze medals of discarded mobile phones, laptops, and other electronic gadgets.

With these efforts, Japan would not be able to cut cost by the US $ 0.50-1.00 billion, it will also be able to do away with millions of discarded mobile phones, laptops, game consoles, and digital cameras.

Such initiatives are also a befitting reply to those protesting Olympics citing waste of money and threat to the environment. Many oppose holding of Olympics games not only in Tokyo but also in Paris and Los Angeles in 2024 and 2048 respectively.

Also read: Japan turns to woods again: 2020 Tokyo Olympics stadium to use wooden roofs, facades

With two key concerns in mind – the wastage of money and environment deterioration, the Japanese authorities launched the Medal project to make the 2020 summer Olympics environment-friendly and sustainable games.

Under this drive, Japan extracted gold in 30 kg, silver in 4,100kg and bronze 2,700kg from 6.21 million used mobile phones, laptops, digital cameras and game consoles collected from various authorities and people of Japan to produce 5000 medals.

A similar attempt was made by Brazil for the 2016 games but it managed to make about 30% of its silver and bronze using discarded electronics gadgets.

People of Japan are contributing in a big way to the environment safety cause as they donated 45 tons of household to make podiums. As many as 100 victory ceremony podiums will be made from recycled household and marine waste plastic.

In yet another first the uniforms for the Olympic Torch Relay are being made partly with recycled plastic bottles.

The Japan Olympic committee has been quite considerate also while getting the National Stadium made anew. The world-known Japanese architects Kengo Kuma, who designed the Olympic Stadium has re-introduced wooden structures for constructing the stadium besides other public buildings.

The roofs and facades of the new stadium will almost entirely be covered in wood. It would also have stepped terraces and vertical gardens, and there would be trees planted in the surroundings using recycled water.

Being built at the cost of 148.9 billion yen ($1.32 billion) in Kasumigaoka, Shinjuku, Tokyo, the stadium has about 2,000 workers involved in the project.