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Medals at Tokyo olympics are recycled from discarded electronic equipment
- ramesh31 5y agoI can't help but think this olympics will go into the history books with an asterisk. That probably has something to do with Biles stepping down. It just feels weird.
- spockz 5y agoIt might be more because these Olympics have been held during a pandemic. With all kinds of consequences.
- serial_dev 5y agoIn the grand scheme of things, Biles stepping down is inconsequential, and it is definitely not a reason for an asterisk in the history books, no matter what this week's news cycle try to make you believe. One year delay, and basically no live audience due to the still ongoing lockdowns and pandemic would be a reason for the asterisk.
- itsoktocry 5y ago>That probably has something to do with Biles stepping down People failing to medal due to mental issues is likely rampant in the games. Nothing is unique about her situation, except she stepped down first.
- Lazare 5y agoI think it was irresponsible to hold them, but I can't see any particular reason why they might not be considered valid. And I certainly I don't think Biles's decision is meaningful. Why would it be? It seems entirely inconsequential to me.
- hellbannedguy 5y agoSimon Biles will go down as a hero. Admitting you don't feel well is huge. Her honesty will save countless people. She is my new hero. I probally shouldn't have said "hero". We all don't like word, or label. I just admire her on a lot of levels. Crippling anxiety pretty much ruined me life.
- mijamo 5y agoIs it? Plenty of athletes say they don't feel well. The specificity about Biles is that she was the great favorite and abandoned at the last minute in the Olympics without much prior signals that it could happen. Tennis players for instance have talked about pressure, depression, the importance of mental preparation for decades now. Recently Them for instance admitted he had a terrible breakdown after so many efforts to finally win the US open and since then hasn't been able to do much. In cycling Dumoulin also recently had a break from his career because he felt too much pressure and too little joy, them dis a great come back at the Olympics. Ian Thorpe in his time spoke a lot about mental health amongst athletes, difficulties and depression.
- rocqua 5y agoThis was significant because it was so last minute. It shows "no matter how far you went, you can always put your mental health first". I think it's also significant because she's womam gymnast. Generally, they have been pushed really hard mentally. With a lot coming out in my country at least about bullying and other (non-sexual) abuse. Mostly this was focused on pushing them to train harder, ignore pain, ignore feelings, and lose more weight. In that context, having a female gymnast stand up and say "no I am not pushing past my limits" is a big deal. It looks like a break with the past of mental abuse. Hopefully putting gymnastics in a much healthier place.
- Tarsul 5y agoFor the competition that Biles competes in (all kinds of gymnastics) it is downright dangerous physically to compete without confidence because every small misstep can result in devastating injuries. That's not the case in many other sports.
- Alex3917 5y agoWe shouldn't have sports where you can increase your chances of winning by increasing your chances of becoming a quadriplegic or getting killed. Whether or not Biles should have pulled out of competition is moot, because her event(s) shouldn't exist in the first place.
- inside6 5y agoWho?
- ColonialOne 5y agoAssuming this isn't a rhetorical question, Google is your friend here. OP wasn't making an obscure reference, her name is headline news around much of the world at the moment.
- fomine3 5y agoWorld Heath Organization
- MauranKilom 5y agoFun fact: Electronic waste contains two orders of magnitude more gold per mass than actual gold ore.
- Retric 5y agoThat’s misleading, gold ore can have an extremely high gold content. The comparison is to the minimum threshold for economic extraction and that’s from rocks via chemical leaching not electronics.
- MauranKilom 5y agoOk, thank you. I went looking for the numbers before posting, but I mostly found the same "100 times" number repeated in different sources and decided to roll with it. Do you have some reference that could be used to inform instead?
- goldenkey 5y agoHere's a reference for your convenience: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28016961 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28016961
- Retric 5y agohttps://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/022315/what-does-grade-gold-mine-refer.asp https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/022315/what-does-gr... As to economic viability, 44g/ton is the highest grade bulk ore being extracted, but much lower concentrations can be viable. Heap leaching is pouring diluted sodium cyanide over a pile of crushed ore this cheaply processes vast quantities of material which scales based on how cheap it is to extract the ore from the ground. For example at current gold prices an open pit mine with ore concentrations of 1g/ton is likely viable, but the deeper the mine the more expensive extraction becomes. 4g/ton is roughly the minimum for traditional mining. Similarly the total quality of ore available must be large enough to justify associated investments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heap_leaching#Precious_metals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heap_leaching#Precious_metals As to gold content of electronic waste “ The electronic waste gold contents vary from 80 to more than 800 parts-per-million (ppm), and silver contents range from 250–350 ppm; no gold or silver is observed in the automotive waste material.” https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40831-016-0051-y https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40831-016-0051-y Anyway, 1 g/ton is ~1ppm so the 100 times number is a reasonable ballpark compared to low grade ore. The issue is Heap leaching doesn’t work on electronic waste and open pit mines are extracting at 10$/ton where handling costs for e-waste is vastly higher.
- numpad0 5y agoThey were going for sustainability angle like recycled medals, stadium benches out of reused wood, cardboard hybrid beds for the village, etc. COVID blew them all away though.
- new299 5y agoI feel like any article on the Olympics should mention that >80% of the Japanese population was against holding the Olympics [1]. And that in most respects it has be a disaster, I've lost count of the number of scandals and resignations... [2] Rather than being good PR for Japan, it feels like it's been overwhelmingly negative. On top of this, COVID19 infections are rapidly increasing (now at their highest level). While the government expands the state of emergency, asking people to restrict their activities while holding the largest sporting event in the world... [1] https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14351670 https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14351670 [2] https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/jul/19/tokyo-olympics-composer-keigo-oyamada-resigns-after-admitting-bullying-disabled-classmates https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/jul/19/tokyo-olympics... https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/11/world/asia/yoshiro-mori-tokyo-olympics-resigns.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/11/world/asia/yoshiro-mori-t... https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14347483 https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14347483
- ekianjo 5y agoOlympics is such a massive waste of money that nobody except politicians who want to show off with taxpayer money or industrials benefiting from government contracts would be for it.
- poooogles 5y agoWe benefited from it in London, I think we all wanted it too. Even if it kind of was an austerity Olympics compared to before it and after it? Sure we wasted some money here and there (was who the fuck needs a giant slide) but overall it turned an industrial wasteland into a useful area for East London.
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- Scea91 5y agoSmall details like this make my day. I also love how it was basically crowdfunded by Japanese people. It quite strenghtens the symbolic value of the medal I think.
- Asymmetryk 5y agowhen and where from can I get myself a recycled electronics gold watch / earrings for my lady geek? I feel very confident that this is going to happen, now, but I'm fascinated by the economics of the acquisition of the e-waste, in terms of "ore" density : it's a while since I was marvelling at the sight of the gold pad to pin wires in a ceramic package. Where's the highest quality and concentrations now?
- jdavis703 5y agoThere are potential moral concerns with e-waste recycling. I won’t say it’s more problematic than mining. But many of the same issues with environmental degradation, dangerous work environments and child labor can apply. Source: https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1129&context=njihr https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewconten...
- AlexandrB 5y agoToo bad they didn't crowdsource the decision about whether the olympics should happen this year: https://sports.yahoo.com/cancel-the-olympics-japanese-people-say-yes-ioc-says-no-151600301.html https://sports.yahoo.com/cancel-the-olympics-japanese-people...
- skocznymroczny 5y agoIf you left the pandemic decisions to a majority vote, most places would be fully open by now.
- taejo 5y agoI don't know about your country, but every month from January to June (the latest data I found) a large majority of Germans polled believed the measures to fight COVID were appropriate or didn't go far enough. https://de.statista.com/infografik/23810/umfrage-zur-angemessenheit-der-aktuellen-corona-massnahmen/ https://de.statista.com/infografik/23810/umfrage-zur-angemes...
- logronoide 5y agoA curious family tale: after the Spanish Civil War, my grandfather extracted gold and silver from broken devices like radios. Then he sold it in the black market to survive, and he briefly went to jail for smuggling. What a turn of life for a watchmaker.
- amelius 5y agoI'm surprised they extracted more silver than copper from the discarded electronics.
- kzrdude 5y agoIt claims the medals are pure silver, but a 925 silver alloy or so would be more realistic? Probably just ignorance of the detail by the research behind the article.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- spodek 5y agoThe 10,000+ athletes who flew around the world and the 100,000-odd attendees who also flew around the world can all offset their emissions with that savings /sarcasm. I love athletics and competition, but do the Olympics promote activity or more sedentariness? They are certainly devastating to the environment. We can achieve more sport, communication, and what they Olympics represent by promoting local fun and games: https://joshuaspodek.com/olympic-devastation-that-could-be-local-fun-instead https://joshuaspodek.com/olympic-devastation-that-could-be-l....
- ColonialOne 5y agoOut of interest do you think it's worth sacrificing international sport competitions for the sake of the environment? What level of travel would you support, are continental competitions ok? National competitions?
- goldenkey 5y agoThe olympics isn't the only international sports competition. It's just the most daft one. It groups unrelated sports together like a circus. It slaps ads, sponsorships, and as much scrooging as it can all over the footage and then ironically pays the athletes a pittance to boot, making them rely on outside sponsorship deals. Most sports have world championships. They don't need the resources that the Olympics do, because they are sport specific and not necessarily sponsored by the government. If I'm American and I goto the world boxing championship, I don't need Biden's permission to represent America. If I win, then an American won. I just get listed as holding the title. The Olympics on the other hand is an ill scandal based on bribes, doping and awful bureaucracy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Olympic_Games_scandals_and_controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Olympic_Games_scandals...
- Retric 5y agoMoving the athletes is effectively trivial for these completions. It’s the spectators and facilities which represent most of the pollution. Olympics is a huge outlier in terms of athletes and it’s still 100 spectators in the stands per 1 athlete.
- grecy 5y agoBrisbane in Australia just "won" the hosting of the 2032 games. It was uncontested, which tells us everything we need to know about how beneficial it is for cities to host it.
- draugadrotten 5y agoCrikey! I hope croc wrestling will be an olympic sport by then, in honour of the amazing Steve Irwin.
- Aeolun 5y agoSeveral million tonnes of equipment = 5 tons of precious metals.
- ChrisArchitect 5y agoCompound Chemical post and infographic where probably a bunch of this article was sourced from: https://www.compoundchem.com/2021/07/27/tokyo2020/ https://www.compoundchem.com/2021/07/27/tokyo2020/
- fukd 5y agoOlympics is a waste of money and resources. it should be banned forever.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- booleandilemma 5y agoI like how it brings countries together to play games with each other. It’s better than the alternative. I want to read about Japan destroying China in sports, not literally. Or are you just butthurt because your country is losing?
- fukd 5y agoOhh god what a disugsting human being you are
- decremental 5y agoIt's not since it can be a great source of pride for people to see their nation represented by their best athletes. It's a display of the best humanity has to offer in the areas of physical endeavor, discipline, and endurance. Reducing everything's value to a function of its consumption of money and resources is a depressing and inhuman way of viewing the world and thankfully most people don't think this way. We're not robots.
- fukd 5y agoIt can be done conducting at one place instead of building and then leaving behind infra. See what happend to what was built last time in Brazil and guess how many Brazils are happy to hear what you said
- MichaelMoser123 5y agoit is much cheaper than holding the same kind of contest between nations in the form of a war.
- busyant 5y agoThis seems like a reasonable opportunity to remind people of this fascinating story. It's not exactly a story about eco-friendliness, but it involves gold medals and "recycling." "When Germany invaded Denmark in 1940, [George] de Hevesy dissolved the gold Nobel Prizes of Max von Laue and James Franck in aqua regia to prevent the Nazis from taking them. After the war, he precipitated the gold out of the acid, and the Nobel Society recast Franck and von Laue's awards from the original gold. In 1958, de Hevesy received the Atoms for Peace Award for his pioneering use of radioactive isotopes to study metabolism. Over his career, he published almost 400 scientific publications." copied from: https://www.atomicheritage.org/profile/george-de-hevesy https://www.atomicheritage.org/profile/george-de-hevesy
- snickmy 5y agoI'm a bit surprised that there are more Silver than Copper and Zinc in electronics . Quote: the government collected several million tonnes of equipment, and extracted 32 kilograms of gold, 3500 kilograms of silver and 2200 kilograms of copper and zinc for the bronze medals
- sandworm101 5y agoSo where did all the non-gold material go? The millions of tons that wasn't precious metals? I see little point in recycling something if 99.99% by volume goes to the landfill anyway.
- vikramkr 5y agoProfit. Recycling rare materials is profitable. Keeping stuff out of landfills is not really why stuff is recycled- thats why we had that whole crisis recently with Recycling materials building up with no destination
- BurningFrog 5y agoThe point is the symbolic gesture. This doesn't help with any environmental goals.
- CydeWeys 5y agoIt does, because precious metals mining is environmentally intensive, and by recovering some from trashed electronics instead you're having to do a little bit less mining. It's something like 31 tonnes of ore must be processed per ounce of gold yielded. That's a lot of energy, fuel, caustic chemicals, and polluting mine tailings.
- BurningFrog 5y agoLots of resources are also used when mining trashed electronics for gold. Which "lots" is worse? I don't know, and neither do you.
- Frost1x 5y agoI was curious about the medals, compositions, and materials costs so here's what I found. The dimensions of the medals are specified as a minimum of 60mm diameter by 3mm thick. For a cylinder, that's 8.482 cm^3 volume per medal, minimum. The 2020 Olympics has 339 events, each with a gold, silver, and bronze medal. Market price I found for gold as of this post is $58.56/g and silver is $0.82/g. Gold has a density of 19.30 g/cm^3 and silver 10.49 g/cm^3. I'm not keeping track of sig figs because I don't care enough for a quick rundown. For the gold medal, its composition is listed as minimum 92.5% silver with 6g of gold mixed in. I didn't see what the percentage specified (mass, volume) so I'll assume volume for silver henceforth. 7.845 cm^3 is 92.5% of min volume of a medal. This works out to 82.294 g of silver (7.845 cm^3 * 10.49 g/cm^3). Using market prices above, silver value: $67.48, gold value: $351.36, total materials value: $418.84. Now, if the gold medal were solid gold, you'd have 163.703 g (8.482 cm^3 * 19.3 g/cm^3) of gold. Materials market value of the medal would be $9,586. For the silver medal, it's 92.5 silver with nothing specified mixed in. So the identical silver component from the gold medal which means its total materials value is $67.48. If the silver medal was pure silver, we'd have 88.976 g (8.482 cm^3 * 10.49 g/cm^3) and the materials value would be $72.96. The bronze is 97% copper, 0.5% tin, and 2.5% zinc. I won't do this because I'm not interested, I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader. Now the fun part, rough estimate of total material cost of existing gold and silver medal compositions for all 339 events: $164,862.48 (339 * ($418.84 + $67.48)). Rough material cost if the gold medals were actually gold and the silver were actually silver: $3.274 million (339*($9,586 + $72.96). It would cost about 20x the current material costs to give the athletes more representitive and valuable medals. The total cost of this would be an additional ~$3.1 million to the host or whoever pays for it.
- gitgud 5y ago> Olympics has 339 events, each with a gold, silver, and bronze medal. Many events are team-based too, where every team member gets a medal.
- Frost1x 5y agoVery good point. I don't really watch sports and 339 was the best representitive number I could find for total medals awarded. I imagine if you knew how many medals were team based, the fixed sizes of teams that get medals, and so on you could work this out more accurately then.
- Koshkin 5y agoI suggest using polished engraved silicon - judging by the looks of an exposed microchip die, it should be beautiful.
- rbanffy 5y agoAs a retrocomputing enthusiast, I find this horrifying. I imagine the beautiful Sony NEWS, Sharp MZ’s, NEC PCs, Epson QX’s and so many other amazing machines that were crushed in order to make decorations.