From: MSNBC

By Rebecca Agiewich
msnbc.com contributor
updated 9:28 a.m. PT, Fri., Feb. 12, 2010

Most of us will never experience the thrill of Olympic victory. Our decrepit old computers and TVs, on the other hand, might make it to the podium as glittering gold medals — thanks to an innovation from this year's winter Olympics.

The 2010 games will boast the first medals in Olympic history to contain metal recovered from end-of-life electronics that would otherwise go to the landfill.

The innovative “Metals to Medals” project — a partnership between Canadian mining company Teck and the Vancouver Organizing Committee — is one of many initiatives that organizers are touting as part of a broad effort to make these games the most "sustainable" ever.

The multitude of green projects detailed here seems fitting for a city that hopes to become the world’s greenest by 2020. Some of the highlights, according to the Vanouver Organizing Committee, or VANOC:

- The Olympic and Paralympic Village in the city of Vancouver is scheduled to become a mixed-use, mixed-income neighborhood after the games and has already won numerous sustainability awards.

- Unused fuel from the more than 12,000 Olympic torches will be recycled and their cylinders re-used; the torches are also constructed of recyclable materials such as steel and aluminum.

- A Lost and Found program will do double duty: distributing items left behind at the games to low-income, inner-city residents, while keeping the items out of landfills.

- VANOC will offset all carbon emissions related directly to the games, while spectators have been asked to voluntarily offset their own.

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