SAN FRANCISCO, US: Mark Bowles said the idea behind ecoATM was born at a coffee shop.

At a Starbucks in Del Mar, California, located north of San Diego, Bowles would routinely meet with Michael Librizzi and Pieter van Rooyen to hatch out their next brainchild. The three multi-year veterans of the wireless, mobile and semiconductor industries have collectively started about a dozen companies, Bowles estimated.

One day Librizzi mentioned a survey he had come across from Nokia, which reported that of 6,500 households surveyed nationwide, only 3 per cent had ever recycled a handset.

That was when the light bulb went on: What's happening with the other 97 per cent?

"As veterans of the tech industry, we helped to create this accumulating mass of cell phones and other electronic devices," said Bowles, co-founder and chief marketing officer of ecoATM. "We decided it would be nice to help clean it up."

San Diego-based ecoATM aims to reduce all that "e-waste" through the use of recycling kiosks - similar to Coinstar vending machines - that calculate the value of an old cell phone's components, and then pays the consumer on the spot in cash or coupons for depositing the device.

To use a kiosk, a consumer plugs in their phone - using the cable provided - and the ecoATM scans the phone's contents and uses a camera that inspects the LCD screen for scratches and checks the phone for missing keys, to determine if it has any monetary value on the secondary market. The kiosk also will erase all data on the phone. The company works with a network of buyers, about 50 worldwide, said Bowles, that resells the phones on the secondary market, mostly offshore, but also domestically.

During trials at a Furniture Mart in Nebraska, consumers on average were paid $11 for each phone. At a similar trial in San Diego, the average payment for cell phones dropped off at the kiosk was $20. Bowles did not disclose what service fee his ecoATM charges at the point of transaction.

Bowles said the trials convinced him and his partners their idea would take off. A few weeks into the Nebraska trial, Bowles said a perpetual line was streaming out from the kiosk as some folks, carrying shopping bags full of old cell phones, waited up to 45 minutes to get their turn at the machine.

"It's hard to predict how consumers will react to kiosks," Bowles said. "But we're not asking for consumers to pay us. We're paying them for the used phones, like a Coinstar machine, which is why we think this automated approach will work."

Apparently, investors are also convinced.