Are you watching the XXI Winter Games in Vancouver? I am a huge Olympics junkie. Ever since volunteering during the Centennial Olympics in Atlanta back in 1996, I’ve loved the Games (both winter and summer varieties) and pretty much devote two weeks of my life biannually to watching them. After consuming four hours of coverage nightly for the last week, the only things more heavily glazed than the short track speed skating rink are my eyeballs.

I was fascinated to discover that all of the medals being awarded in Vancouver include gold, silver and bronze (actually copper, since little or no bronze is used in electronics) reclaimed from computer motherboards. It’s the first time Olympic and Paralympic medals have contained e-waste. The short film below, produced by Dell Computer’s blog Motherboard, shows how the medals were created and the thought process behind them.