Press release by Tokyo 2020:
25 April 2018
The Tokyo Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (Tokyo 2020) today carried out its first review of medal designs, narrowing them down to a shortlist of three for the Olympic Games and three for the Paralympic Games. The review comes as the nationwide collection of discarded electronic devices aimed at yielding the precious metals that will be used to make the medals continues to progress.`
The medal design competition commenced in December 2017 and more than 400 designs were submitted by the public. A Tokyo 2020 medal design selection panel comprising a member of the Tokyo 2020 Brand Advisory Board, Olympic and Paralympic medallists and professional designers subsequently reviewed all entries and selected today’s shortlist.
The competition guidelines stated that the designs need to embody the Tokyo 2020 Games’ vision, “sport has the power to change the world and our future.”
With the help of the designers, a manufacturing institution will create three-dimensional mock-ups of each medal design; one Olympic design and one Paralympic design will be selected in the summer of 2018. The new medals will be unveiled in the summer of 2019 together with specially commissioned ribbons and cases.
In April 2017, Tokyo 2020 commenced the nationwide collection of discarded and obsolete electronic devices, in order to use the metal they contain in the production of medals – the first time such an innovative and environmentally-friendly approach has been adopted by an Olympic and Paralympic Organising Committee.
As of January 2018, approximately 9,000 tons of discarded devices had been collected by municipal authorities across Japan, and more than 2.6 million used mobile phones had been handed in at NTT DOCOMO stores across Japan. An update on the collection process is available at Tokyo 2020 Medal Project.