The problem: A mountain of obsolete electronic devices, many containing hazardous compounds. The Environmental Protection Agency notes that 140 million cell phones were sold in the US in 2007 — and only 10% of those will end up being recycled.
To address that problem — and prepare for federal laws that require electronics merchants to accept old devices for recycling — A new company called ecoATM has begun deploying an an ATM-like machine.
The process is simple: a customer feeds the machine an old mobile phone and it analyses the device and assigns it a value. If the phone has a resale value, the customer receives store credit, or can donate the amount to charity. If there’s no resale value, customers can choose to have the handset recycled.
Although it currently only takes mobile phones, ecoATM will soon be able to accept a range of consumer electronics including MP3 players, digital cameras and even computers and printers.
The first ecoATM was installed at Nebraska Furniture Mart in Omaha. But the company is working with other large retailers, and says it will soon have machines in San Diego, Boston, Dallas and Seattle.
