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Japan Hardware Games Technology The 2000 Beanies

Tokyo 2020 Olympic Medals To Be Made From Recycled Phones (silicon.co.uk) 56

Posted by BeauHD from the reuse-and-recycle dept.
Mickeycaskill quotes a report from Silicon.co.uk: The medals for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games will be made from recycled mobile phones in an effort to engage the Japanese nation and meet sustainability criteria. The Tokyo 2020 organizing committee has called on the Japanese public to donate their "discarded or obsolete electronic devices" to provide the eight tonnes of metal required for the production of the medals. The production process will reduce this eight tonnes down to around two, enough to produce 5,000 Olympic and Paralympic medals. Collection boxes will be installed in the stores of partner organizations NTT DOCOMO and the Japan Environmental Sanitation Center (JESC) from April, with the collection ending when the eight-tonne target is reached.
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Tokyo 2020 Olympic Medals To Be Made From Recycled Phones More

Tokyo 2020 Olympic Medals To Be Made From Recycled Phones

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  • Made from Note 7... (Score:5, Funny)

    by ELCouz ( 1338259 ) on Wednesday February 01, 2017 @07:30PM (#53784973)
    Well at least the supply not be a problem!

    • >> the collection ending when the eight-tonne target is reached.
      There's your problem : it's just a marketing stunt. Why not continue it ?????

    • Looks like they're talking about metric tons. This page [itmedia.co.jp] says that it'll take a total of 1,999,200 grams of metal (9,996 g Gold; 1,232,840 g Silver; 736,372 g Copper; 16,660 g Zinc; 3,332 g Tin), which is about 2 metric tons. At market prices, that's 114,781,936 yen or $1,019,462. Guess they're saying it'll take four times that weight of actual phones to get that much metal ("The production process will reduce this eight tonnes down to around two").

  • Let's see, the current medals are mostly silver and bronze with traces of copper and gold. Do cell phones have a lot of silver in them?

    • Yes... All the solder is silver based. Well, it is if you want to sell consumer electronics in the EU. We used to use lead, but that apparently was ending up in land fills and making a mess...

      • We got yer Lithium, Zinc and Antimony medals right here.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Osgeld ( 1900440 )

        Lead-free solders in commercial use may contain tin, copper, silver, bismuth, indium, zinc, antimony, and traces of other metals

        Companies go to great lengths to use as little solder as possible (ours saved almost 10 grand a year on a single low volume product by reducing paste by 20%) and of that tiny amount of solder only a minuscule amount of it might be silver (silver is not required for lead free solder)

        so the amount of effort, energy and nasty ass chemicals to extract the possible silver would be a ridiculous waste of time

        • Nobody ever said recycling was environmentally friendly... It can be, or in this case, not be.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Osgeld ( 1900440 )

            99.999% of the time recycling takes more time effort and energy than the processing of raw materials

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by stooo ( 2202012 )

              >> 99.999% of the time recycling takes more time effort and energy than the processing of raw materials
              Obviously wrong. Some materials recycle economically. eg.
              - Asphalt
              - Paper
              - some fabrics
              - Lead in Batteries
              - rare earths in auto catalyzers
              - some plastics ....

              Basically, when your application uses a lot of the stuff, it's often economical to recycle. For small quantities, like phones, not so much --> needs a push from Taxation.

            • 99% of statistics are made up to prove a point. Source on that? There are things which lend themselves to recycling quite well, either because it's easy (such as in paper), the results are valuable (such as lead acid batteries), or the removal of some waste from the environment is desired (Lead batteries again)

              My dad says.... "There are lines... Damn lines .... Then Statistics.. " He's right..

      • It isn't "silver-based" it's silver-baring. For reflow solder, in terms of lead-free solutions, the most common these days is Tin-silver-copper. The most common alloy is only 3% silver. Some alloys are as low as 0.3%. The amount of silver in a cell phone is on the order of a couple micro-grams at best. The same is true for gold; since it's electroplated only a couple atoms thick. There are tons of websites and YouTube vids about reclaiming precious metals from electronics, and absolutely no one in their rig
  • From Wikipedia: "Olympic Gold medals are required to be made from at least 92.5% silver, and must contain a minimum of 6 grams of gold.[6] All Olympic medals must be at least 60mm in diameter and 3mm thick.[6] Minting the medals is the responsibility of the Olympic host."

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      This is strangely one of the most disappointing facts.

      captcha: whimper

  • Set your medal to vibrate (Score:4, Funny)

    by jfdavis668 ( 1414919 ) on Wednesday February 01, 2017 @09:16PM (#53785525)
    During the medal ceremony, don't forget to set your medal to vibrate.

  • 2 tons of material required for crafting 5000 medals, this makes each medal as heavy as 400 kg.

    Indeed you need to be an athlete of Olympic class to carry that on the podium.

  • Will the medal winners be able to cover the roaming charges?

  • Do they come with free data plans, or do you have to pay for the 24x7 surveillance they provide?

  • 3rd place: Samsung Galaxy 7 with the inscription "You're on fire"

    2nd place: Google Nexus 5X with the inscription "We expected great things from you but you didn't made the grade"

    1st place: Apple iPhone with the inscription "You think you're the best but that doesn't last forever"

  • You know how Olympic athletes like to bite into their medals after receiving them? (because that used to be a way of telling that "gold" was really gold) Well, I hope they're healthy after biting into lead and gallium arsenide...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by stooo ( 2202012 )

      There's not much lead and GaAs in phones.
      For lead, thanks to the ROHS
      For GaAs, thanks to the extremely low quantities needed for doping Si.

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