EcoATM held the grand opening ceremony for its new headquarters on 12 December 2014, giving the public its first look at their new environmentally friendly LEED-certified building.

EcoATM, a San Diego born start-up, was founded six years ago in the EvoNexus Incubator, and was one of the first companies to raise money and spin out. Last year the company was sold for $350M to Outerwall [NASDAQ: OUTR], a Washington-based public company, which made the commitment to sign a 10 year lease to retain and grow the business in San Diego. A part of that growth plan is this new 53,000 square foot facility that puts over 400 San Diegan’s to work while adhering to the company’s vision of being environmentally conscious.

EcoATM provides automated drop-off kiosks around the country for people to deposit their electronics for a cash refund. For a full report on EcoATM, see this previous article on Bright Side of News*.

EcoATM’s new Barnes Canyon building was designed to ensure the company’s commitment to a collaborative environment, its unique culture and focus on sustainability were top of mind and can be seen throughout the building. Highlights of the sustainability attributes of the building, complementing ecoATM’s Gold LEED certification application, include water waste reduction (vital given the current drought), bicycle storage (helping San Diego bike to work) and upcycled furnishings. The new headquarters is conveniently located next to public transportation options and includes EV charging options for employees to have an environmentally friendly commute into the office.

Attendees for the grand opening ceremony included building and construction partners from Hughes Marino, Rudolph and Sletten, Alexandria; city dignitaries from the Economic Development Corporation, Mayor Kevin Faulconer and Congressman Scott Peters; and Outerwall executives, CEO Scott di Valerio and CSO James Pinckney.

As part of the ribbon cutting ceremony, ecoATM, along with its parent company Outerwall, made a $2500 donation to The Fisher House Foundation. The Fisher House Foundation is a network of comfort homes where military and veterans’ families can stay at no cost while a loved one is receiving treatment.

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ecoATM, a division of Outerwall who is also the parent company of Redbox and Coinstar (Nasdaq: OUTR), has a nationwide network of 1,510 automated electronics recycling kiosks located in shopping malls and stores. The kiosk will take your old phones, tablets, and MP3 players and turn them into cash on the spot.

Last week at Pepcom-SF, BSN* spoke with Juli Spaventa who demoed a unit for us. The kiosk requires only a few steps to recycle your device.

ecoATM kiosk at Pepcom-SF

You simply follow the on-screen prompts and insert a valid government-issued ID. ecoATM uses a state-of-the-art ID scanner and AssureTec Reader validation software that not only photographs the ID but validates its authenticity by examining the ID for holograms, watermarks, or other specific authentication methods used in all 50 states. Spaventa said they have 29 patents on their one-of-a-kind kiosk. Fake ID’s may get you into the nightclub, but they won’t get you cash for a stolen phone.

After your ID is validated, an ecoATM’s security person checks to see you match the ID by watching you from the web cameras in the kiosk. All this only takes a couple of minutes. If the technician cannot confirm you are the person in the ID you presented, then game over – the transaction is canceled.

Assuming your face matches your ID, the kiosk dispenses a tracking decal to put on your device. After affixing the decal, you put your device into the kiosk and it scans your device’s condition and compares it with a database to make an offer based on the market value and current condition. At that time, you can accept ecoATM’s offer or it will return your device out of the kiosk. If you accept the offer, you must use the thumb print reader which keeps the thumb scan as part of your security information. Then your cash is available just like a bank ATM.

We decided to check out a kiosk at a local mall. While there, we noticed another benefit – no-cost charging station on one side of the kiosk. A man was just starting the process of recycling his older iPhone for cash. We asked him if we could follow along.

Alan inserts his valid California ID

Alan applies decal to his old iPhone

When the man, who simply identified himself as Alan, was finished and had his cash, he said: “This is way better than having it lay around in a drawer”.

Some law enforcement agencies have been quoted in past articles about ecoATM saying it is too easy for a crook to get cash for a stolen phone. So we contacted ecoATM’s HQ about that. They called back and responded to our query. Their spokesperson confirmed that the transaction we watched followed their standard security verification processes. The spokesperson said that less than 1 percent of the phones recycled by ecoATM are proven to be stolen. Many of the stolen recycled phones end up being returned and the crook caught like this story from San Francisco. She also explained another aspect of their kiosk for customers who might be wary of presenting personal information. We were told that only law enforcement can get a print out of any specific transaction with the person’s information and the information about the device that was recycled.

A few law enforcement agencies have acted like they want the kiosks removed because of the potential for fraud. They didn’t react that way to Target, Home Depot, or Walmart when millions of their credit card numbers were compromised. Could it be because ecoATM is a new company, law enforcement is trying to hold them to a double standard when compared to big box stores?

ecoATM can prove there is a second life for 75 percent of all devices collected. For the remaining 25 percent, ecoATM partners with R2 certified e-waste reclamation facilities to ensure that those materials are responsibly reused and recycled. ecoATM holds Responsible Recycling (R2) and ISO14001 certifications, confirming the company’s commitment to maintaining the highest standards of electronics recycling, as well as ISO27001 certification for information and personal data security. ecoATM’s tracking system is much better than using Craigslist or a questionable phone reseller to recycle your devices.

The ecoATM spokesperson told BSN* that a Forrester Research study said 57 percent of American device owners have an idle phone laying around their home, yet only 22 percent of those owners say they have previously recycled cellphones they no longer use. The company has already collected more than three million devices. The collection of all those devices enabled the recovery or reuse of 879,000 pounds of recyclable materials that’s nearly enough plastics, metals and potentially toxic materials to equal the weight of two Boeing 747-400 series airplanes.

ecoATM does recommend that everybody write down the International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) or Mobile Equipment Identifier (MEID) number of their device. MEID is a form of ESN (Electronic Serial Number). Normally they are hidden below or under your device’s battery. This location will help you find those numbers.

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Thanks to our friends at ecoATM, we were able to gather some really interesting statistics about people’s trade-in/recycling behaviors after the iPhone 6’s launch. ecoATM is a company that owns and operates 1,100 machines across the United States that allow people to trade in their electronics and have them recycles for an instantaneous cash payout. ecoATM has been in this business for quite some time so they have experience with new product launches and sudden jumps in trade-ins.

As such, it comes as no surprise that they have some really interesting data about the iPhone 6 launch’s impact on iPhone trade-ins nationwide. Thanks to their data, we can see exactly what people are upgrading from as well as what kinds of devices are being replaced the most by iPhone 6s and 6 pluses.

So, what do these colored dots translate to? What do the blue (light), green (medium), light green (high) and orange (enormous) demand dots come down to?

EcoATM Trade-in Map

Since the iPhone 6 and 6 plus became available, ecoATM saw an increase of 80% on iPhone-related activity across their entire network of kiosks. And specifically in California, trade-ins were up 104% and in Texas 92%. EcoATM says that they normally expect such jumps in these areas because these regions are populated with plenty of techies. They did, however, discover some outliers including Tennessee, which saw an increase of 195% and Massachusetts with an increase of 168%. When looking at the map, it does seem a bit odd that the Tennessee/Kentucky/Ohio area is so dense with trade-in activity but the stats don’t lie. They also saw New York increase 92%, like Texas, which isn’t surprising considering how many iPhone users live in New York City alone.

In addition to actual iPhone trade-in’s ecoATM’s own site saw a huge amount of increase interest in their phone recycling for cash kiosks. Their website has seen a 200% increase in sessions since the launch as well as their kiosk locator page saw an increase of 250% during the same period since the launch.

People were also checking the prices of specific devices before they went to the ecoATM Kiosks (which you can do here)

The iPhone 5S saw an increase of 205% of inquiries, the iPhone 5C saw an increase of 110% and the iPhone 5 saw an increase of a whopping 480%. Clearly, you can tell that the majority of people looking to upgrade to the iPhone 6 are people with iPhone 5’s which makes sense since that would have been 2 years ago when people first signed their new 2-year contracts. Additionally, the iPhone 4S saw an increase of 100% in inquiries and the iPhone 4 saw a pretty sizable 240% increase as well.

But Apple’s iPhones weren’t the only devices that started to get more trade-in interest, there was plenty of interest in trading-in Samsung devices as well. The fairly new Samsung Galaxy S5 actually saw an increase of 77% in inquiries while the Galaxy S4 saw the biggest increase among Samsung devices with a 110% increase. The Galaxy S3 saw an increase of 63% and all Galaxy Notes (Note, Note 2, and Note 3) saw an increase of 93% in inquiries.

Overall, if you take all of this trade-in data into consideration it really seems like the iPhone 5 was the primary device that people were looking to replace with an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus, which admittedly isn’t very surprising. What may actually be more interesting is the regional increases, especially in Tennessee. Either way, there is a lot of very good data about the needs and wants of iPhone users and it really looks like a lot of people buying the iPhone 6 were already iPhone users and many of them were very likely iPhone 5 users too.

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