Medals at Tokyo olympics are recycled from discarded electronic equipment
cosmosmagazine.com
cosmosmagazine.com
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.
Many events are team-based too, where every team member gets a medal.
From wikipedia: 'Some combat sports (such as boxing, judo, taekwondo and wrestling) award two bronze medals per competition, resulting in, overall, more bronze medals being awarded than the other colours."
A handy dandy list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ties_for_medals_at_the...
Do they specify maximums? That could get hilarious.
My numbers differ from yours (I get $801k for 1,842 medals) namely due to medal material composition: https://www.travelstatsman.com/02082021/614-gold-medals-will...
As to economic viability, 44g/ton is the highest grade bulk ore being extracted, but much lower concentrations can be viable. Heap leaching is pouring diluted sodium cyanide over a pile of crushed ore this cheaply processes vast quantities of material which scales based on how cheap it is to extract the ore from the ground. For example at current gold prices an open pit mine with ore concentrations of 1g/ton is likely viable, but the deeper the mine the more expensive extraction becomes. 4g/ton is roughly the minimum for traditional mining. Similarly the total quality of ore available must be large enough to justify associated investments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heap_leaching#Precious_metals
As to gold content of electronic waste “ The electronic waste gold contents vary from 80 to more than 800 parts-per-million (ppm), and silver contents range from 250–350 ppm; no gold or silver is observed in the automotive waste material.” https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40831-016-0051-y
Anyway, 1 g/ton is ~1ppm so the 100 times number is a reasonable ballpark compared to low grade ore. The issue is Heap leaching doesn’t work on electronic waste and open pit mines are extracting at 10$/ton where handling costs for e-waste is vastly higher.
Source: https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewconten...
Hosting the games ends up costing the host countries more money anyway so if IOC skips over them in the future...so what?
E: this assumes the fine isn't already in escrow
Beyond a certain point, fines become a game of political chicken.
COVID blew them all away though.
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
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/jul/19/tokyo-olympics...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/11/world/asia/yoshiro-mori-t...
Why would you need the Olympics to have land repurposed. They were waiting for a good excuse? No need to have big expensive party if you could have done that in any other context. But then again you'd need to whole country to accept paying for making new apartments just in Sydney.
Paris might also be, as they have very little new infra to build.
> We simulated the behaviour of industries, households and government resulting from hosting the Games for each of eight Australian regions over the years from 1997 to 2005. Our results revealed that rather than producing an economic benefit the Sydney Games actually reduced Australian household consumption by $2.1 billion.
For comparison there are later reviews of the economics of the town with the 6 years after Olympics, with less simulation apparently, which come to a different conclusion https://repository.tcu.edu/handle/116099117/10360
I honestly don’t know which one is more trustworthy
Definitely not true. However, post hoc I am forced to admit it was not as colossal a waste of money as I'd expected, and honestly there was an astonishingly positive societal response. So, I was wrong, but I was not alone!
Of course in the usual London fashion most of the money came out of UK govt coffers, national lottery funding etc - so it was just a form of London sucking cash out of the rest of the UK to build infra, via the handy "Olympics" excuse, so I can see how a londoner might argue it was good as it was a means of extracting resources from the rest of the country.
In the aggregate, it was just a giant waste of money especially for the 90% of the UK population that isn't in London.
London, like most modern cities, generates a surplus that subsidizes surrounding suburban and rural areas[1].
It was still an awful waste of money, but it wasn't part of any trend.
1. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/may/23/uk-budget-d...
[1] https://www.ippr.org/news-and-media/press-releases/revealed-...
There is a lot of self-fulfilment when it comes to London spending vs London generation of revenues.
It's famously the case that London props up almost the entire rest of the country. Scotland itself being a net-loss in terms of GDP.
I come from a City called Coventry, "investment" in the city is non-existent; the only investor right now is the University which has essentially bought the entire City over the last 10 years.
Why? Because "Coventry doesn't make money". Why does Coventry not make money? -- well, companies would never headquarter there because the infrastructure is not good enough and the networking connections are not compelling; even if you think it will save you money because it's cheaper to hire in Coventry (somewhere in the order of 1/3rd london salaries, 1/5th London commercial rents) it's still awkward because navigating the city requires making use of the awful public transport or buying a car[0] (which the city is close to capacity with already!)
Birmingham, Britains "second city" has only moderate investment compared to London (though insanely more than most other UK cities), but also feels destitute in the majority of areas, _especially_ when compared to London, the infrastructure is marginally better than Coventry but the prestige/networking/access is nearly no different.
This is many decades in the making, there is absolutely no way to compete with a city like London which is reaping the rewards of many decades of incredible investment which creates network effects which only serve to increase the gravitational pull of the city.
But now there is, yet another, infrastructure project that is connected to London.
Spreading investment around the UK would be a good thing, it would take the heat out of Southern property prices, if everyone wasn't compelled to find jobs in the same geographic area.
Coventry has fought (as I see it) 2 major issues which have held it back.
Firstly as the center of the UK car industry and the Detroit of Britain its economic successes and failures have been tied closely to the ups and downs of UK car production. The collapse of that industry from the 1980s through to the early 2000s resulted in huge numbers of unemployed skilled and semi-skilled manufacturing workers. Manufacturing of that type and scale is not something governments can will into existence (and generally the efforts to do so have been at best non-ideal - see Rover's sale to BMW).
The other issue with Coventry is the well-intentioned but disastrous rebuilding of the city center following its flattening in WWII. The city center remains an uninviting concrete jungle with few non-retail businesses and almost no housing. Though the 1980s the inner core became a no-go area after dark and continues to have a bad reputation. Outside of University housing there is little reason for anyone to live anywhere but the suburbs (or in a neighboring town or city).
I would argue that Coventry does have excellent infrastructure and that is no part of why companies haven't wanted to move there. There are multiple trains per hour to London (and Birmingham) and is served by major motorways to London, Birmingham and Oxford (M6/M45/M69). Compared to most UK cities traffic seems manageable.
The expansion of Coventry University and University of Warwick (which despite its name is located in Coventry) may have been the best possible result for the city. How else could the UK government have spent money in the city to attract the size of employers that the city needs?
https://www.standard.co.uk/homesandproperty/buying-mortgages...
I can give some examples;
1) Newham was a very impoverished area before the olympic stadium was set to move there. Now Stratford and Newham are desirable.. More desirable than Hackney which has been "up and coming" for as long as I lived there.
2) Internet in London is/was _abysmal_. Genuinely awful. I even wrote a exasperated blog post about it[0]. This was due to degraded and faulty ADSL being he only option and grossly oversubscribed even if it worked well- and the large providers only followed each other with fibre installations.
When the olympics rolled in there was an enormous infrastructure improvement - I even remember talking to some Telecity employees about it. -- That infrastructure was later sold on to last mile providers who expanded it a bit and I went from speeds worse than dial-up with frequent route drops to symmetric gigabit and IPv6 using a new company called "Hyperoptic". That was a real improvement for everyone in my area because they had given up on home internet. (no netflix, youtube, only basic banking websites possible).
[0]: https://blog.dijit.sh/the-true-state-of-london-broadband
So, what are you contributing to the conversation?
Except it is one giant international PR and brand recognition event for the host country. TV ads cost in aggregate billions too and don’t bring any revenue immediately, doesn’t mean they are a waste of money.
Not to mention Olympics getting people interested in doing sports, which amid a global obesity upsurge, could also be worth more than nothing.
Even for “name recognition” as an end in itself - cities like London and Tokyo are hardly backwaters in need of a PR boost.
If tackling obesity is such a priority, I’m sure there’s more direct and effective ways to tackle it with 11 billion quid.
How well can companies evidentiate their brand awareness campaigns? How well can an actress calculate returns from having attended a talk-show? Evidence of absence cannot reliably be inferred from an absence of evidence.
> Even for “name recognition” as an end in itself - cities like London and Tokyo are hardly backwaters in need of a PR boost.
Familiarity is not the same as salience. Coca Cola is known by virtually the entire world, that doesn't make them stop the ads or branding campaigns.
> If tackling obesity is such a priority, I’m sure there’s more direct and effective ways to tackle it with 11 billion quid.
Conceivable doesn't mean doable. There are many direct and effective ways of improving a great many things in the world, yet they don't happen.
Just like a great startup idea doesn't translate to a billion dollar revenue, political implementation doesn't spring into existence just from good ideas either.
Remarkably well actually. You can do things like ask people questions about the olympics and the sponsor city and then put them into cohorts based on their answers. From that, you can look at how much spending occurred in the target city from each cohort.
You can never say that for sure because the money spent on organizing Olympics could have been used somewhere else (or not used at all, therefore decreasing taxation). It was certainly a waste for anyone not living in London in any case.
Los Angeles is looking forward to having the games in 2028 because it gives them extra money to pay for infrastructure that they've been planning to build anyway.
San Francisco really wanted the 2028 games as well because it would have allowed us to finish building BART/CalTrain around the Bay, and we would have already had all the venues necessary with the various pro and college facilities around the Bay.
Do you have a source? From https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/economics-hosting-olympic-g...
> As a result, in 1979 Los Angeles was the only city to bid for the 1984 Summer Olympics, allowing it to negotiate exceptionally favorable terms with the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
> The 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles were the only games to produce a surplus, in large part because the city was able to rely on already existing infrastructure. As the costs of hosting have skyrocketed, revenues cover only a fraction of expenditures. Beijing’s 2008 Summer Olympics generated $3.6 billion in revenue, compared with over $40 billion in costs, and London’s Summer Games in 2012 generated $5.2 billion compared with $18 billion in costs. What’s more, much of the revenue doesn’t go to the host—the IOC keeps more than half of all television revenue, typically the single largest chunk of money generated by the games.
I think the majority is for a non-COVID olympics.
There’s a state of emergency in Tokyo (now expanded to surrounding areas). But this doesn’t really restrict people very much.
Yes, the majority are against holding the Olympics now (or cancelling it if it’s not possible to postpone). But you’d likely find support for delaying the Olympics until after COVID-19 (whenever that might be).
When you phrase it like that it has me imagining make the 100m sprint for Covid athletes (maybe 80% SpO2?). It sounds quite interesting. So I guess I’m now part of the 20%.
You are basically describing every olympics I can remember and most that I’ve read about before my birth.
Assassinations, at least 5 decades of doping scandals by East Germany and USSR, ice skaters’ husbands attacking competitors, Hitler, etc.
The Olympics is a rage-inducing waste of taxpayer money, but I love watching gymnastics.
Japan's Law incites and rewards Child Abductions by giving sole custody to the first abductor. Judicial visitation decisions are not enforced.
By refusing to protect the fundamental Right of Children to access both their parents directly and regularly, as per the CRC, Japan is a massive and frequent Child Right violator.
In 2019, Japan Minister of Justice publicly and cynically qualified the CRC of "non-binding", and the European Parliament's resolution denouncing the violations of being "unfunded".
Is is estimated that between 150,000 and 200,000 new children each year, the majority Japanese, have this basic Human Right violated in Japan.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/japan-cust...
The UN's CRC is indeed about Children's Human Rights. The specific article in question being Art 9.3
And just because the UN says it doesn’t make it so.
This does not mean I dispute that there are human rights. Politicians have every incentive to claim something as a right when it’s not.
For example, the UN could announce the newfound “Right to a Gun-Free Society.” Despite the name, it’s not Universal or Unalienable.
Clearly not.
You can go to many places on earth, even major western countries, where people do not have these rights.
However, they are sometimes not respected and it's the duty of the international community to lobby against the perpetrators especially when they took the moral engagement to recognise them officially.
It not the wild west, there are voluntarily agreed upon international treaties that can be brought as a base for these discussions.
Many people do not have these rights. This cannot possibly be a surprise to you?
> That's the definition of Universal.
We know. That's why they aren't universal rights.
> However, they are sometimes not respected
If you live under an authority that doesn't think you have these rights, then you don't have them.
If someone the other side of the world tells you that you have the right to freedom of religion, but the authority you live under disagrees, and the people on the other side of the world don't do anything about it, then in what sense do you have the right?
You don't - it's meaningless.
If I say I have decided that you have the universal inalienable right to beer, but where you live doesn't agree, and I don't do anything about it either, then have I really given you that right? Of course not.
I think what you're saying is that you think people should have these rights. Great. But they don't in practice, and so they aren't universal.
The vocation of tyrants is to have their head cut at some point, more or less figuratively.
So even you know they aren't actually universal or inalienable.
232 years of pretending people have rights that they demonstrably do not have.
Yes. What is the meaning of a right that nobody enforces?
It's just an aspiration, a wish, something you'd like to have or other people would like you to have. If nobody's enforcing it, it's not really a right. By definition.
> Hence events like the French Revolution, the Abolition of slavery, or the Civil Rights Movement.
These were fights to create rights. They didn't have them before.
Already during our visits to Japan in 2017 and 2019 we could see a lot of infrastructure work going on all around, lots of optimistic Olympic advertising and countdowns. It really should have been an even presenting modern Japan to the whole world, with the expectation that many of the countless tourists who would go for the Olympics would like Japan and return.
But with covid this is all gone, a lot of expensive infrastructure that will take many years to pay back without all the tourists and possibly bad image of Japan on the international stage & dissatisfaction with the government and foreign organizations in the Japanese population.
Oh well, at least Akira did not happen. ;-)
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
This doesn't help with any environmental goals.
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.
Which "lots" is worse? I don't know, and neither do you.
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
It was uncontested, which tells us everything we need to know about how beneficial it is for cities to host it.
I want to read about Japan destroying China in sports, not literally.
Or are you just butthurt because your country is losing?
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-l....
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...
One year delay, and basically no live audience due to the still ongoing lockdowns and pandemic would be a reason for the asterisk.
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.
And I certainly I don't think Biles's decision is meaningful. Why would it be? It seems entirely inconsequential to me.
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.
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.
I also think that this decision took a lot of bravery for Biles. And I admire her for that.
Traditionally, yes. The Olympic spirit is to be willing to push yourself as hard as necessary, through anything, even to the point of death, to win the gold. Quitting only brings shame and disgrace to you and your country.
I agree with what Simone Biles did, and I don't think anyone can judge her - only she knows what her headspace and capabilities were - but it was absolutely against what the Olympic spirit is supposed to be. Olympic competition often serves as a form of neo-eugenic nationalist propaganda (that our nation and its values creates genetically superior people and potential combatants to yours.) Imagine the furor if this were the 1980s and Simone Biles had quit and a Soviet gymnast had won the gold medal. Everyone in the US would be calling her a traitor and a coward.
I'm sure she made the best decision for herself, but that's quite the opposite of heroic. She let down a lot of people. Heroic is fighting through the problems and doing what you need to do despite that adversity, not giving into it and going home.
To me (european, doesn't follow sports at all), the name is an obscure reference.