Olympic athletes will sleep on beds made of cardboard during this year’s summer games in Tokyo.
“Those beds can stand up to 200 kilograms,” Takashi Kitajima, the general manager of the Athletes Village, told the Associated Press.
That’s about 440 pounds that the beds can support.
“They are stronger than wooden beds,” Kitajima said, though he noted that both wood and cardboard beds could break if athletes jump on them while celebrating their successes.
Athletes competing at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games will sleep on bed frames made from recyclable cardboard, with mattresses formed of polyethylene materials that will be reused for plastic products after the Games https://t.co/JXPgrqAnDm pic.twitter.com/V7BeJ5v117
— Reuters (@Reuters) January 9, 2020
The single bed frames will be recycled into paper products after the Summer Olympics, which begin July 24. The mattresses, which are not made of cardboard, will be recycled into plastic products. This is the first time the beds and bedding have been made of renewable materials, according to organizers.
“The organizing committee was thinking about recyclable items, and the bed was one of the ideas,” Kitajima said.
The Athletes Village, where athletes stay while competing, will have 18,000 beds within 21 apartment towers.
