Between the Japanese Prime Minister making a guest appearance as Mario at the Rio Closing Ceremony and the insanity you’re about to read below, I think it’s fair to assume the 2020 Tokyo Olympics are gonna be nek level good.
Sure, four years is a reasonably long time, but when you’re asking the entire country to cough up their old mobile phones and consumer electronics to craft your Olympic medals, it’s best to get on that pretty early.
The denizens of Japan are being urged to delve into the country’s massive “urban mine” of electronic waste in an effort to craft all of the medals for the 2020 games from recycled e-waste.
Japan actually have a big ol’ problem with this e-waste and as a result, the country passed a law in 2009 that makes recycling home appliances such as air conditioners and TV’s mandatory.
It’s estimated that 16 percent of the the entire world’s gold and 22 percent of its silver are currently hanging out in electronics in Japan alone. The entire world’s. Yuge!
I know what you’re thinking – this all sounds like it’ll require a metric fuck-tonne of e-waste to get off the ground, right? It’s not as huge as you might think. The 2012 London Olympics used 9.6kg of gold, 1,210kg of silver and 700kg of copper to make their winner-discs. In 2014, it was estimated that Japan’s giant e-waste mine grew by 143kg of gold, 1,566kg of silver and 1,112 tonnes of copper, so it’s a totally achievable goal.
Don’t think there’s enough gold in that equation? It would appear that way, but what the Olympic overlords don’t want you to know, is that the percentage of gold used in gold medals is actually tiny. The London games gold medals were just 1 percent gold and 92.5 percent silver, leaving 6.5 percent as something I like to call, ~the mystery metal~.*
*I have no fucking idea what this is, aye.
Source: Uproxx.
Photo: Getty
This article was written by resident Futurist Editor Matt Hopkins – the lovechild of PEDESTRIAN.TV‘s partnership with Telstra. To learn more about how Telstra‘s bringing the magic of tech to life + our project with them, head HERE.
