The Olympics are over, but the Olympic melons are not over yet. What the hell is "the medals are rusted"?

Olympic medals are rusty!

The Paris Olympics is over, but the various topics about the Olympics are far from over.

Just four days ago, American skateboarder Nia Houston released a video claiming that just 10 days after winning the bronze medal, his medal had deteriorated and the surface looked dull and rusty.

Houston showed the medals with peeling plating and rough surface in the video, and said: "It feels that the quality is obviously not as good as expected. (The back) looks rough, even the front. (The plating) is starting to fall off... Olympic medals, you may need to improve the quality a little bit."

American skateboarder says bronze medal turned rusty and black

This year's Olympic medals were designed by Parisian jewelry brand CHAUMET and produced by the Paris Mint. Oxford Economics estimates that the value of a gold medal is $1,027 (about RMB 7,361). It can be seen that the value of these medals is not low, so why do such quality problems occur?

Experts have analyzed that the specific composition of medals varies from Olympics to Olympics. The gold medals of this Olympics are actually mainly made of silver with a layer of gold on them. Bronze medals are usually made of a mixture of copper, zinc and tin, known as bronze. If bronze is not protected, it will combine with oxygen in the air to form a dull patina, which can explain why Houston's medals were damaged. The rate at which bronze degrades depends on the proportion of metals in the alloy, and cheaper metals usually speed up the process.

In fact, it is no secret that Olympic medals are made of a variety of materials, not pure gold, silver or copper. According to the International Olympic Committee, a gold medal meets the standard as long as it contains 550 grams of high-quality silver and 6 grams of gold. The last time a pure gold Olympic medal appeared was more than a hundred years ago at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics.

In February 2024, the organizers of the Paris Olympics announced the design of the Olympic medals. The Olympic and Paralympic medals will have a hexagonal iron block in the middle. The iron block weighs about 18 grams and is made from old building materials from the real Eiffel Tower.

Since its construction in the 1880s, the Eiffel Tower's iron frame has been refurbished many times, and some of the iron has been removed. It is said that the scraps have been kept in a secret warehouse by the Eiffel Tower's operating company, and now it has been made into 5,084 medals.

Paris Olympic medals inlaid with old Eiffel Tower building materials

In fact, this kind of Olympic medal that saves money, is environmentally friendly and has special significance is not the first time it has appeared.

The medals of the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics contain a variety of recyclable materials: the ribbons hanging the medals are made of recycled plastic bottles; the silver medals are made of old car parts, X-rays and broken mirrors; the Brazilian Mint also made bronze medals from waste copper materials from its own factory. In addition, the wood of the wooden box that holds the medals also comes from sustainable forests in Brazil. This forest is managed in a sustainable way to prevent the forest from being completely cut down, while allowing more wild animals to live in it.

In the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, one of the highlights of the organizers was the use of the "trash alchemy" method. Since 2017, the Japanese government has launched a large-scale recycling campaign, collecting nearly 79,000 tons of small household appliances and 6.21 million old mobile phones. After refining, a total of 32 kilograms of pure gold, 3,500 kilograms of pure silver and 2,200 kilograms of copper were obtained, which were eventually transformed into medals and sent to athletes. This move not only reduced production costs, but also greatly reduced the burden on the environment, demonstrating Japan's advanced technology and environmental protection concepts.

E-waste alchemy

The Japanese Olympic Committee's "electronic waste alchemy" is the first attempt in the history of the Olympic Games. When the news came out, not only in Japan but also in the international community, people thought that this idea was creative and unique.

This may raise awareness of recycling e-waste, which has become the fastest growing waste in the world, even to the point of an "e-waste tsunami", with hundreds of millions of tons of old home appliances, screens and instruments around the world, and only 20% of electronic products being recycled.

The concept of "urban mine" was also proposed by the Japanese, Professor Michio Nanjo of the Institute of Mineral Processing and Refining of Tohoku University. This mine does not refer to natural mineral deposits such as coal mines, iron mines, and oil fields, but is a metaphor for the large-scale development of waste resource recycling based on the recycling of metal resources. It refers to the recyclable steel, non-ferrous metals, precious metals, plastics, rubber and other resources generated and stored in waste electromechanical equipment, wires and cables, communication tools, automobiles, home appliances, electronic products, metal and plastic packaging and waste materials during the process of industrialization and urbanization.

The reason why the city is likened to a mine for secondary resource development is that these daily electronic products contain a variety of metal elements. If they are refined and processed, better quality metals can be obtained than through natural mining.

E-waste recycling is an urgent problem, but there is much that can be done

A single mobile phone is a small mine. The connector of a mobile phone contains copper, nickel, and gold, the resistor contains iron, silver, nickel, copper, zinc and other elements, the semiconductor components contain gold, silver, silicon, tin, and copper, and other parts contain different types of metal elements. According to estimates, 200g of gold, 23kg of silver, and 100kg of copper can be extracted from 1 ton of used mobile phones; 300g of gold, 1kg of silver, 150kg of copper and nearly 2,000g of rare metals can be extracted from 1 ton of used computers. However, mining 1 ton of gold sand can only extract 5g of gold.

Compared with the gold content of electronic waste, the gold content of the same weight of ore is 60 to 80 times. Compared with mining and processing natural resources, the pollutants and environmental impact of electronic waste in the reasonable processing and utilization process will be lower, and the value of the metal extracted from this "urban mine" is also higher than that of ordinary mines. At the same time, by mining the "urban mine" of electronic waste and standardizing its recycling and disassembly, it not only reduces urban garbage, but also protects the green mountains and clear waters of nature, which can be said to be "the best of both worlds."

At present, the main methods of electronic waste treatment include manual disassembly, sorting, physical crushing, sorting, etc. Circuit boards and other parts of electronic waste can be recycled through wet and pyrometallurgical methods.

my country already has 109 standardized recycling and processing companies for waste electrical and electronic products, with a disposal capacity of about 170 million units per year. With the rapid development of digital technology and the increasing popularity of mechanical processing equipment, many advanced patented technologies and complete sets of process technology solutions have been replicated and promoted, dismantling efficiency and level have been continuously improved, and the industry standard dismantling rate has continued to rise. At present, the level of intelligence and automation in my country's electronic waste treatment industry has been significantly improved. Taking the complete set of technology and equipment for crushing and separating waste refrigerators as an example, the purity of various products obtained by the automatic crushing and sorting equipment for waste refrigerators can exceed 95%, including magnetic metal products such as iron, with a purity of up to 99%.

According to statistics, as of the end of 2023, the dismantling and processing of waste electrical appliances in my country has produced more than 20 million tons of dismantling products and obtained more than 7.5 million tons of recycled resources, including copper, aluminum, iron, plastic, etc.

Turning waste into something magical is not only a technology, but also an art and an advanced concept. As a global sports event, the Olympic Games has always been the focus of everyone's attention. The waste materials contained in the medals are also an interpretation of the Olympic Games' pursuit of sustainable development goals for all mankind.

Of course, no matter how advanced the ideas are, they cannot be used as an excuse for shoddy workmanship. In response to Nia Houston's complaints about the poor quality of the medals, the Paris Olympic Committee made an official statement, saying: "The IOC is in close contact with the Paris Mint, which is responsible for the production and quality control of the medals, and the Olympic Committee of the athlete's country to evaluate the medals to understand the damage and the cause... Medals are the most coveted items at the Olympics and the most precious items for athletes. The Paris Mint will replace the damaged medal in a planned manner and provide the athlete with a new, identical medal."

For Nia Houston, if she could really get a new medal, it would be a satisfactory solution.