By Rachel Cernansky Boulder, CO, USA | Tue Feb 16, 2010 04:00 PM ET

I haven't been paying much attention to the Olympics, but there's one piece of news coming out of Vancouver that I find totally worth sharing. (Would be two if the importation of snow hadn't already been written up.) For the first time, the medals awarded at the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games will contain recycled materials.

The Vancouver-based Teck Resources extracted gold, silver, and copper from old electronics (through a smelting process on cathode ray tube glass, circuit boards, and other computer parts) for use in the more than 1,000 medals that will be awarded at the end of the games. A total of 2.05 kg of gold, 1,950 kg of silver, and 903 kg of copper were used, which in the end means just a small percentage of recycled material in each medal, but the mining of gold and other minerals is often quite destructive, so it's a good first step—and as any Olympic athlete would probably tell you, you've gotta start somewhere!

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