The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas is an annual event with a lot of great showcases of the latest in electronics technology. This year, one of the new items being shown was called the EcoATM. This machine is a recycling center for old phones that allows consumers to deposit old phones and get instant cash.
The machine is basically a small vending machine with a touch screen and some ingenious internals that analyze the phone you’ve inserted to determine whether or not it’s working, what it’s make and model are, and then how much it might be worth recycled or repurposed.
If the user accepts the terms, the machine then spits out cash like an ATM, paying for the phone and depositing it into its internal storage reservoir. If the phone is not worth reselling and has little value, the machine will explain this, but gives the option of allowing it to keep it for recycling without a cash payout.
These machines can be set up virtually anywhere, so they could be put just about anywhere that recycling an old phone would be convenient. Like in the mall next to the cell phone or gadget store, inside the store itself, etc.
So far, there are 50 of the machines deployed around California and the company behind the machine says it hopes to have 500 of them in stores and locations by the end of the year. Their deployment plans spread the machines eastward.
This is a very hot idea and is the kind of thing that can really turn the tide on the huge number of gadgets that are tossed into the bin and sent to the landfill every year. At least this idea seems better than the one we saw in the mall for gold dispensed from a machine.
