Tech Story: 2010 Olympic Medals

This year, the Royal Canadian Mint will produce 615 Olympic and 399 Paralympic medals for the greatly anticipated 2010 Winter Olympics being held in Vancouver, British Columbia. Not to be outdone by generations past, Canada has given the typical Olympic medal a thoughtful new facelift, blazing new trails in terms of design, composition, and innovation. The Canadian government has employed Teck Resources Limited – a Vancouver-based mining, mineral processing, and metallurgical company – to produce the medals, while keeping mindful of the company’s professed commitment to sustainability. In response to this request, Teck has designed a recycling process that salvages metal from discarded electronics (also known as e-waste) such as computers, keyboards, and televisions. This process provides a functional solution to the challenge of reducing the amount of e-waste material that would otherwise be destined to degenerate in landfills.

Another exciting element for this year’s medals is that, for the first time in history, each medal awarded  will be different, engaging an independent section of a much larger master image created by Canadian designer and artist, Corinne Hunt. For the Olympic medal design, Hunt drew inspiration from the orca whale for its beauty, individual strength, and loyalty to its community. To create each medal, the matte orca is lasered onto the front face of the medal, and within this design is a delicate wood grain pattern that can be viewed up close. Canadian industrial designer and architect Omer Arbel used his extensive knowledge of materials and fabrication processes to create an innovative undulating design to the medals, which is meant to illustrate the rolling hills of the Canadian landscape.

The 2010 Olympic medals prove to be a refreshing new example of how necessary it is to constantly reexamine the way we recycle. Instead of allowing discarded old ipods, desktops, cell phones, and televisions to pile up in a landfill like some bizarre island of misfit gadgets, we can instead melt them down, spruce them up, and again put them to good use.

Click here to take a closer look at the 2010 Olympic Medals!