Japan has time and again shown the world, how industrious, innovative and hardworking the citizens of a country can be thereby setting examples on several occasions.

This year on the environment day the country has decided to show the world, how they care for the environment through a simple yet meaningful action. The Podiums at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics will be made from the plastic waste donated by locals or collected from the sea. This is probably the first time in the history of Olympics that the podiums have been made from recycled materials.

Tokyo 2020 Olympics, CEO Toshiro Muto said, the plan would help them push the message of sustainability, which they want to be a key theme of the Games, which is scheduled to take place next year. Toshiro Muto said, “By sending that message to both Japan and the rest of the world, we think this project will have great significance”.

The organisers of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics who have sought to frame the Games as environmentally friendly and a mechanism to bring about sustainable change in Japan, also has the plan to make all the medals to be distributed as a prize from the recycled electronic waste such as old mobile phones and other electronic devices.

The dress to be worn by the runners in the torch relay will be partially made up of recycled plastic bottles. The athletes who will represent Japan at the Games will also wear an official kit that is made partially from the recycled clothes collected from across the country.

According to the organisers 2020 Tokyo Olympics, for this project, they will need about 45 tonnes of plastic to make around 100 podiums for the Games. For this purpose, the organisers are planning to collect plastic through more than 2,000 outlets of local supermarket chain AEON, where boxes will be set out for Tokyo residents to drop off their recyclable plastic waste.

It will be open for the residents from 13th June, to deposit unwanted plastic items for the podiums project. The project will also use the plastic waste that has been collected from the ocean during marine cleanups.

Japan along with the United States, has not signed on to the G7’s ocean plastics charter in the year 2018. The charter calls for a “resource-efficient lifecycle management approach to plastics in the economy, which also includes working toward making all plastics recyclable by 2030, thus reducing single-use plastics and promoting the use of recycled plastic”. The charter also calls for the member nations to take steps to build recycling infrastructure and innovate around more sustainable technologies.

