NSF Award
1152672
This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR)Phase II project is designed to commercialize a consumer self-serve, automated kiosk for the evaluation, buy back, and collection of used electronics directly from consumers. Prototype kiosks deployed during Phase I provided convincing proof of the feasibility of the baseline technical approach to the visual and electrical inspection technology, robotics, and the market. Financial metrics achieved were many multiples better than industry leading kiosks such as Coinstar or Redbox. Further R&D is required to achieve enough reliability in the automated inspection systems and the kiosk hardware to lead to the permanent removal the kiosk attendants in field that currently serve as the fail-safe mechanism in the current prototype systems. Broad commercial success relies on the development of a robust, designed-for-manufacturability (DFM), designed-for-serviceability (DFS), commercially reliable kiosk with a minimum retail field life of 5 years that incorporates needed improvements learned from Phase I including refinements to the visual inspection system and algorithms, electrical inspection system, test station robotics subsystems, ergonomics, GUI, and channel management systems. ecoATM also hopes to further develop the system?s capability to offer personal data erasure and expand accepted device types to potentially include digital cameras, portable game players, printer cartridges, laptops, eReaders, and tablets.<br/><br/>The broader impact of ecoATM?s patented system is that we finally achieved the threshold of consumer convenience and financial incentive required to inspire mass consumer participation in electronics recycling. Our pilot market tests indicate that we harvested 20 times more used phones than the next closest competitor in the test areas. As ecoATM scales nationally we will divert mass amounts of toxic eWaste from our landfills, and put huge sums of cash back in the hands of our customers and the retail locations hosting the kiosks, providing stimulus and incentive for these stakeholders to help forever alter the current wasteful lifecycle of consumer electronics. On average, each ecoATM collects enough eWaste to offset its own annual energy consumption after just 5 days placement resulting in 360 days of CO2 offset. An average ecoATM collects over 7,000 phones per year, which according to the EPA calculator is equivalent to taking the CO2 of 35 houses off the grid for a year. National and global media have taken notice of ecoATM already and even the United Nation?s Low Carbon Leadership Program recognized ecoATM as one of the best ideas in the world for the reduction of CO2 on a global basis.
