When it comes to medals, engineering swept the field at the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games. That’s because regardless of the athletic event, every one of the 5,000 gold, silver, and bronze orbs bestowed on the 2021 champions was made from recycled cellphones and other discarded consumer electronics collected over the past few years, People magazine reports.

The International Olympic Committee explained in a statement released back in 2019 that the initiative, dubbed the Tokyo 2020 Medal Project, as a part of the host country, Japan’s, goal to make the Olympics the “most environmentally friendly and sustainable Games so far.” The 2010 Vancouver Games started the trend and the 2016 Rio Games featured silver and bronze medals made from 30 percent recycled materials.

Wide-scale recovery and e-waste recycling of materials is a vexing engineering problem. As ASEE Prism magazine reported in a November 2020 cover story, almost 55 million tons of tossed desktops, cellphones, TVs, and household appliances littered the world in 2018, much of it toxic. According to a recent United Nations study, while discarded electronics make up just 2 percent of the world’s solid-waste stream, they account for around 70 percent of the hazardous scraps in landfills.

The Japanese effort included placing donation boxes around the country and collecting electronic wasted donated by more than 1,300 educational institutions and 2,100 electronic stores, for a total of 78,985 tons of discarded devices. Among them: over 6.2 million used mobile phones along with digital cameras, handheld games, and laptops, all of which melted down by highly trained contractors.

“I am convinced that Japanese metal molding techniques and the superb design have combined well and that we have the best medal in the world — one that we can be proud of,” Ryohei Miyata, chair of Tokyo 2020’s medal design selection committee, told CNN. “There is also a beautiful balance between the design of the medals and their ribbons. It makes me want to strive for a medal myself.”

Canadian sportscaster Danny Burke explains the Tokyo Olympics recycled-metal medals:

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Tags: 2021 Tokyo Olympics medals from recycled electronics, e-cycling, e-waste, materials, metals, Sustainability