Earn cash for your old smart phone

(WPRI) -- There's a new environmentally-friendly option available to easily get rid of that old smart phone, and make some cash in the process.

We've all been to an ATM, where we put in our card and out comes cash. Now, at some local malls, we've found machines that take your old phones, and in similar fashion, out comes some cash.

Tom Tullie is the CEO of San Diego-based ecoATM , which is not your typical money machine.

"You place your device inside of the chamber. The system will close on it and will identify that phone via the use of artificial intelligence software, camera and vision systems," he said.

Tulle says users can get more than $200 for some of the latest models, and that his 181 kiosks across the country are the first to be used this way.

In Southern New England, ecoATMs can be found at:

• Providence Place Mall
• Warwick Mall
• Emerald Square Mall
• Swansea Mall

"Most of the companies that will sell you the phone will also help you recycle the phone," said Katie Boehret of the Wall Street Journal.

Handheld recycling is quickly turning into big business. Analysts at Compass Intelligence estimate there are 278 million deactivated or idle mobile phones in the U.S. right now, and only 20 percent are recycled.

"They might drop their phones off and they might get the cash for it, but I think a lot of people will make the mistake of not wiping their phone in the first place," added Boehret. "It could be a real privacy concern."

ecoATM says its kiosks encourage users to completely erase the data from their devices before selling them, and that the company actually does their own final data wipe.

"The demand for cell phones, which is going to double in about ten years, is going to cause bottlenecks in the supply of critical materials that are used for those phones," said Peter Kelemen of Columbia University.

Consumers, then, get to make sure those materials don't get wasted. But more immediately, they make a little money.

As for concerns about stolen items, users must scan a photo ID and be digitally finger-printed before the phones are sent off to be refurbished or recycled.