We just spoke to Mark Bowles, CEO of ecoATM, who has some 20 years of experience in the wireless, semiconductor industry. His company that engages in eCycling –technically automated eCycling stations– of cell phones. But phones are not the end goal, as you will see. (or hear –since this was recorded for a podcast iseries at GreenNurture.
So what’s an ecoATM, we wondered. Another green machine? How did the concept come about?
“We are a bunch of hi-tech guys, and we decided to see how we could use technology to solve problems. We had seen a Nokia survey of 100 countries showed how a me 3% of cell phones are recycled. We wondered how we could provide a solution …Girl scouts do cookies. Could boy scouts collect phones?”
Turns out there is a huge collection problem. So Bowles and his team came up with a system to give all stakeholders in the chain an incentive to not just do the right thing, but make it convenient. “Incentivizing and convenience go hand.”
That’s where gift cards and store credit comes in.
It works like this: Consumer walks into a store with a couple of old cell phones lying in the bottom of his drawer at the office. He uses a connector in the machine to plug the phones in. Algorithms and cameras in the ecoATM machine ‘grade’ the phones; he drops them into the kiosk and the machine spits out a credit –to be spent at that store.
But beyond the cool factor of trading in or eCycling your old phone, there is a big environmental benefit whenever you do it.
- We collectively buy $180 worth of consumer electronics (500 million devices) every year.
- Some 25 million get retired –stuck in our drawers and closets - 75 tons of phones every year.
- There are 3,600 phone models in the country.
- EPA estimates that the circuits and boards of phones which have gold, cadmium, palladium and copper, generate 3 tons of mining waste.
None of this makes sense, unless you visualize it., says Bowles, and offers up this visual:
Of 150 million phones shipped into the US every year. That would make 2,000 boxcars of phones coming into the US every year!
Line those up it is a 20-mile long train.
With that as a backdrop, the idea of diverting phones from landfills (and drawers) looks like a viable model. “This is about giving electronics a ’second life,’ says Bowles.
So how could electronics manufacturers and resellers take up the ecoATM concept and run with it? We know that Dell and HP engage in e-cycling on a large scale. How do other manufacturing companies get into an e-cycling game?
Bowles observed how Staples is running a wildly successful Trade-in/Tradeup program for customers’ old printers. For retailers, the ecoATM can simplify this, with a kiosk that doesn’t cost them anything.
So we wondered, why stop at phones? Could the kiosk accept other electronics? That is coming, says Bowles built to be—not just for iPhones, ipods, and cameras but for ‘non-binnable waste’ –i.e. PCs, printers etc. Maybe seeing these eco-ATMs in our neighborhood electronics and grocery stores will change behaviors.
Maybe it would help us slow down that train!
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