Tokyo Olympic Games medals to be made from recycled electronic waste

Organisers of the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games have revealed that the 2020 medals will be made entirely of recycled electronic waste.

A project, which kicked off in 2017, has been collecting electronic waste such as old smartphones, cameras and laptops to gather enough gold, silver and bronze metal for the Olympic medals.

The committee set a target to collect 30.3kg of gold, 4,100kg silver and 2,700kg of bronze from the Japanese public.

By November last year, 47,488 tonnes of discarded devices had been collected, with the public handing in another five million used phones to a local network provider.

Thanks to "huge levels of support," the committee said in a statement on Friday that they expected to reach the quotas by the end of March.

"It is estimated that the remaining amounts of metal required to manufacture all Olympic and Paralympic medals can be extracted from the devices already donated," Tokyo 2020 organisers said.

At the 2016 Olympics in Rio, about 30 per cent of the silver and bronze in medals came from recycled materials.