Precious Medals

Are you watching the XXI Winter Games in Vancouver? I am a huge Olympics junkie. Ever since volunteering during the Centennial Olympics in Atlanta back in 1996, I've loved the Games (both winter and summer varieties) and pretty much devote two weeks of my life biannually to watching them. After consuming four hours of coverage nightly for the last week, the only things more heavily glazed than the short track speed skating rink are my eyeballs.

I was fascinated to discover that all of the medals being awarded in Vancouver include gold, silver and bronze (actually copper, since little or no bronze is used in electronics) reclaimed from computer motherboards. It's the first time Olympic and Paralympic medals have contained e-waste. The short film below, produced by Dell Computer's blog Motherboard, shows how the medals were created and the thought process behind them.

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The Heap is a blog featuring waste industry news and analysis written by the staff of Waste Age magazine and guest commentators.

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Steven Averett

Steven Averett joined the Waste Age staff in February 2006. Since then he has helped the magazine expand its coverage and garner a range of awards from FOLIO, the American Society of Business...

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Allan Gerlat joined the Waste Age staff in September 2011 as news editor. He was the editor of Waste & Recycling News for the first 16 years of its history, and under his guidance the publication...
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