Olympics: How the Tokyo medals differ from all others
The metal of medals
The 2021 Olympic medals are made of recycled materials.
Phoning it in
More than 1,600 municipalities in Japan participated in the “Tokyo 2020 Medal Project” to collect used laptops and mobile phones.
The project was the first in history to involve citizens in the production of medals, and to manufacture the medals using all recycled metals.
After collecting 78,985 tons of materials from about 6.2 million devices; 70 pounds of gold, 7,716 pounds of silver and 4,850 pounds of bronze were used to make more than 5,000 medals.
The 2021 Olympics used household plastic and marine plastic waste to create podiums for the medal ceremonies, and produced Olympic Torch relay uniforms with recycled plastic bottles.