Approximately, 500 million new electronic gadgets are bought by U.S. consumers each year, according to the Consumer Electronics Association (News - Alert). And, average U.S. household currently owns 26 different consumer electronic devices making the total to nearly 3 billion devices in all, many of which are no longer in use and are un-recycled thereby increasing the toxic waste.
In an effort to encourage consumers to responsibly resell or recycle unused devices, a San Diego, California-based provider of automated self-serve kiosk system, ecoATM, announced that it has launched a new fully automated consumer electronics recycling kiosk, eCycling Station, featuring built-in cash dispenser.
According to ecoATM, the eCycling Station provides convenience, immediate financial incentive, and personal data removal for consumers. It leverages a patented, advanced machine vision, electronic diagnostics, and artificial intelligence to evaluate and buy back used electronics directly from consumers for cash or store credit.
This completely consumer self-serve consumer electronics recycling kiosk can not only electronically and/or visually inspect virtually any consumer electronic device, but can also connect consumers in real-time with a broad worldwide secondary market to ensure best pricing.
Apart from paying consumers immediately in cash and/or store credit, the new automated self-serve kiosk system can also automatically administer trade-in /trade-up promotions for retailers and manufacturers.
"We've been successfully testing our systems over the last year and a half and are providing what consumers want: ease of use, best value, and immediate payment for their used electronics," said ecoATM chairman and CEO, Tom Tullie, in a press release. "The addition of the cash dispenser and other features to the ecoATM make it even quicker and more convenient."
"ecoATM is unique because their value proposition is relevant to almost everyone and because they don't ask their customers for money, they pay money to their customers," said Matt Marshall, executive producer of DEMO, in a statement. "In addition to the individual financial benefit to their customers, ecoATM has an overarching public benefit by helping save our environment from tons of eWaste."
ecoATM
was awarded a Phase 1 grant by the National Science Foundation (NSF). This grant will help the company to further refine and expand its research and development in advanced machine vision, artificial intelligence, and testing systems for used electronics.
Jayashree Adkoli is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Jayashree's articles, please visit her columnist page.Edited by
Jennifer Russell
