Page 38 from: New issue out now!

38

JAPAN SCORES wITH RECyCLEd OLymPIC mEdALS
the organising committee of the olympic Games in tokyo in
2020 says enough scrap metal has been recovered from dis-
carded electronics to create all the winners’ medals for next
year.
Japan set up special recycling points at public hotspots all over
the country in April 2017 to collect the gold, silver, and copper
needed for the hundreds of medals at next year’s Games and the
Paralympic Games. The much discussed initiative was successful

and a total of 47 488 tons of discarded devices were collected.
This includes more than five million used mobile phones as well as
a large quantity of digital cameras, handheld game consoles and
laptops.
Together, these devices yielded 2.7 tonnes of recovered bronze,
more than 30kg of gold and 4.1 tonnes of silver. The recycling
scheme was so popular that the recycling target for copper was
achieved by June of last year.

The end-of-life electronics are currently en-route to recycling
facilities near Tokyo. ‘The designs for the 2 500 medals will
be unveiled this summer,’ says Thomas Bach, president of
the International Olympic Committee.
The Olympic initiative attracted donations and media sup-
port from Japanese citizens and businesses as well as nation-
al and international athletes. NTT Docomo, Japan’s largest
mobile phone operator, was said to be ‘critical’ to the proj-
ect’s success. The company allowed people to return
unwanted phones at any of its 100+ shops, making it easy
for them to be part of this unique endeavour. NTT Docomo
hopes to help recycle 10 million phones by 2020.
Considering Japan has a population of 126 million, and there
are more than 106 million registered smartphones users in
the country, there are a lot more handhelds left to process in
future. To put this into perspective, new figures from Statista
indicate that the number of mobile phone users in the world
stands at almost five billion. The Olympic Committee points
out that each smartphone contains approximately 25 milli-
grams of gold, worth around one dollar.

Akemi Ori: ‘The responsibility for process-
ing waste, collecting, disposing, and recy-
cling lies with municipalities.’

One shouldn’t underestimate the
impact of grassroots recycling initia-
tives in a city like Tokyo. For example,
in the Waseda district, shop-owners
and the local university have started
to work together on a system where
students hand in recyclable items for
coupons, which in turn can be used to
buy products or food in the shopping
area.
Some areas perform badly due to the
composition of their populations.
‘Ikebukuro, for instance, has a bad
recycling record. Many single house-
holds, foreigners, and students live
there. They’re not concerned with
separating their garbage or can’t
afford to be concerned,’ says Ori.
‘Recycling facilities need to make a
bigger effort to [get people to] recy-
cle their recyclables, because it is not
separated adequately. For instance,
milk cartons should be cut, folded,
washed and dried before being left in
the designated area on the street. If

because companies and municipali-
ties can’t afford the space for them.
‘The space they have is automatically
used for more profitable enterprises.
In Hokkaido, in the Northern island
of Japan, there have been initiatives
but they don’t have a problem of
space.’

this is not done, the value of the prod-
ucts decreases and recyclers pay less
money for the recyclables.’

A VIRTuOuS CIRCLE FOR SOmE
In this way, municipalities with a poor
separation records get less money
from the recycling facilities for their
efforts. On the other hand, areas with
a high rate of separation and many
recycling categories can ask for more
money for their recyclables: money
that can be fed back into the system,
leading to better recycling perfor-
mances. It’s a virtuous circle of sorts.
Recycling in Tokyo is more of a per-
sonal question than a problem that
can be solved by a systematic
approach. ‘You need leaders, whether
they be politicians, mayors, or mem-
bers of grassroots movements, who
care about the environment to achieve
higher recycling rates,’ Ori argues.
An absence of deposit schemes to
retrieve recyclables doesn’t help

36-37-38_tokyo.indd 38 14-03-19 08:35