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NTT Docomo supports Tokyo 2020 Olympics medal-making campaign
TAMUNING, Guam—NTT Docomo, Docomo Pacific’s parent company, supports Tokyo 2020 Olympics medal-making campaign.
This year’s Olympic Games in Tokyo is rewarding athletes with medals made from recycled electronics. The original idea, announced over four years ago by the Tokyo Olympics organizing committee, became a reality when the Olympic medal-making campaign asked members of the public to donate old devices such as smartphones, laptops, and gaming consoles to make the medals.
Launched in 2017, the campaign, called “Making Medals for Urban Mines,” received over 47,488 tons of equipment in the first 18 months, and 5 million phones from the local Japanese phone provider, NTT Docomo. The campaign planned to make 5,000 Olympic medals for the Olympic and Paralympic Games and reached the targeted amount of bronze within just 14 months.
To support the project, NTT Docomo’s donation of 5 million devices came from collecting used mobile phones in approximately 2,400 of its shops across Japan. The company found that in 2017, household ownership of devices was 94.8% of which 75.1% were smartphones.
Having conducted the survey, NTT said in a statement: “Considering that people tend to replace their mobile telephones—essential to daily life as information terminals—just over every four years or so, this world-first project for recycling used mobile telephones and other small appliances 100% to create medals will also lead to the creation of mechanisms for recycling limited resources.”
“We are proud of our parent company’s efforts at recycling and their contribution to the Olympic Games in Tokyo. We are also planning a recycling campaign for Guam and CNMI in the near future to promote the importance of island sustainability,” said Roderick Boss, Docomo Pacific’s chief executive officer. (PR)
