Japan wants old phones to make Tokyo 2020 Olympics medals

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Waste not: The organising committee behind the 2020 Games - which has come under fire from Japanese taxpayers concerned at the soaring costs of hosting the world’s largest sporting event - said it intends to work with companies to collect discarded electronic devices and to “mine” them for gold, silver and bronze. File photo: Reuters

Published: 4:14pm, 10 Nov 2016Updated: 10:40pm, 10 Nov 2016

Organisers of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games and Paralympics are planning a scavenger hunt for the two tonnes of precious medals required for the winners’ medals.

The organising committee behind the 2020 Games - which has come under fire from Japanese taxpayers concerned at the soaring costs of hosting the world’s largest sporting event - said it intends to work with companies to collect discarded electronic devices and to “mine” them for gold, silver and bronze.

An estimated 650,000 tonnes of electronics are discarded every year in Japan, ranging from digital wristwatches to flat-screen televisions or refrigerators. And while previously they may simply have been dumped in landfills, those devices are now regarded as “urban mines” containing thousands of tonnes of gold, silver, copper, iron and other metals that can be salvaged, recycled and re-purposed.

Britain's Mo Farah bites his gold medal on the podium of the Men's 10,000m in Rio. File photo: AFP

According to a study by the Japanese National Institute for Materials Science, Japan uses the highest amount of metal resources in electrical appliances in the world, outstripping the natural metal reserves of many mineral-producing countries.

The NIMS report estimated that there are some 6,800 tonnes of gold in Japan, worth an estimated Y20 trillion (HK$1.47 trillion) and accounting for 16 per cent of the total reserves in the world’s mines. Similarly, there are around 60,000 tonnes of silver here, around 23 per cent of the world’s reserves, and 1,700 tonnes of iridium - more than 60 per cent of the world’s reserves.

By these calculations, Japan has more gold than South Africa and more silver, iridium and lead than any other single nation.

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