Turning Ewaste into Gold During the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, champions were not just taking home gold, silver, or bronze medals-they were also playing a role in reducing electronic waste. For the first time in Olympic history, each medal, more than 1,000 of them, was made with a tiny bit of the more than 140,000 tons of ewaste that otherwise would have been sent to landfills. The medals are the first containing metal salvaged from televisions, circuit boards, computer monitors, and electronic waste.
The so-called urban ore was supplied by Teck Resources Ltd., Canada's largest base-metals producer, which provided gold, silver, and copper used to make the medals. Historically, Olympic medals have been made from mined mineral deposits; this is the first time that recycled materials have been added to them. First-place winners get gold-plated medals that are 92.5 percent silver. The secondplace prizes are also 92.5 percent silver, while the third-place bronze medals are mostly copper.
All the medals have some ewaste materials from Teck's electronic recycling program located in Trail, British Columbia. Teck mixed gold, silver, and copper from the program with metals mined from the ground. The company said it couldn't provide the exact percentage of mined versus recycled material in the finished medals. Each gold medal contained a little more than 1.5 percent of ewaste materials, while each copper medal contained just over 1 percent, and the silver medals contained only small pieces. The ewaste came from old computer monitor's glass, various computer parts, and other surplus or discarded technologies. Several different processing methods were used to extract the materials. First, the company shredded the equipment to separate out the various metals, glass, and other usable parts.
To remove the metals that could not be recovered by the shredding process, the parts were fed into a furnace operating at a temperature greater than 2,000 degrees (Fahrenheit). The materials were then combined with other metals to create the medals.
Each medal was hand-cropped, ensuring no two are alike, another first in Olympic history. The medals, designed by Canadian artist Corrine Hunt, were also the first nonflat medals made for the Games, with a wavy form to represent the ocean and mountain snowdrifts, both characteristic of Vancouver's environment. In addition to representing the athletes' outstanding achievements, the 2010 Olympic medals gave new life to the precious metals recoverable from ewaste.
Questions
1. Why would the Olympics benefit from creating a strong environmental MIS infrastructure?
2. How can the Olympics help support ethical ewaste initiatives?
3. Why would a sporting event like the Olympics be concerned with reducing its carbon footprint?
4. What could the Olympics do to help shed light on global environmental MIS issues?
5. How could Moore's Law enable future Olympic medals to be made from more ewaste?