News

EcoATM announces deployment of electronic waste-recycling kiosk

October 4, 2009

EcoATM, a San Diego-based maker of automated "eCycling" stations, has announced the deployment of its first kiosk for electronic waste recycling at the Nebraska Furniture Mart in Omaha, Neb.

According to a news release from ecoATM, the kiosk offers to buy back used mobile phones, giving consumers a financial incentive to recycle the devices. The kiosk soon will support other consumer electronics as well, ecoATM says.

Mark Bowles, ecoATM's chief executive, says consumers have responded thus far:

We are extremely pleased with the initial results and consumers' delight with the system. EcoATM's solution finally makes it easy for consumers to give their used phones a second life or to recycle them. Over 100 million used but still valuable phones are quietly retired to closets and drawers each year in the U.S., where they decay into zero value and then enter our landfills years later. Our automated ecoATM provides consumers and retailers an easy, convenient, incentivized method to convert those devices into real money instead of toxic waste.

In addition to the Nebraska deployment, ecoATM has announced it is a finalist for San Diego's Most Innovative New Product Awards, a competition run by the city's CONNECT organization, which promotes innovation as a foundation of the region's economy. EcoATM says the award winners will be announced in December.

The company says it plans to launch additional "eCycling" stations with retailers in San Diego, Boston, Dallas and Seattle.