You wouldn’t normally equate cardboard boxes and beds with the world’s most famous sporting event, but trust Tokyo to do things a little differently. The Tokyo 2020 Olympics has, ever since the beginning, advocated keeping a low carbon footprint for the global event by reusing as many resources as possible. They’ve forged their Olympic medals from rare-earth materials sourced from e-waste, and even made torches out of metal used in temporary housing units that were created as shelter for the victims of the Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami in 2011. Organizers of the 2020 Olympic event have announced yet another area of intervention for their eco-friendly approach. Beds.
The Olympics hosts as many as 18,000 athletes (as well as an additional 8,000 athletes for the Paralympics), and the beds for them will be provided by Japanese company (and Olympics partner) Airweave. The beds will be crafted from high-resistance cardboard, which isn’t just environmentally friendly, but is stronger than wood too. In fact, the beds can take on as much as 200 kgs of weight (which is far more than any athlete weighed in the 2016 Rio Olympics). The mattresses and pillows will be supplied by Airweave too, featuring a polyethylene construction that can be easily recycled after the month-long event that starts on the 9th of August and ends on the 6th of September with the Paralympics.
“This will be the first time in Olympic and Paralympic history that all villages’ beds and bedding are made almost entirely from renewable materialism,’ say Tokyo 2020 Olympic officials. Tokyo 2020 hopes to minimize resource wastage for its global event and has set a target of recycling or reusing as much as 99% of all items and good procured!
Designer: Airweave for Tokyo 2020 Olympics
