With the continuous upgrading of digital products such as mobile phones, the issue of electronic waste pollution and disposal becomes increasingly serious. In recent years, "Internet +" has provided an effective solution for recycling electronic products. At this year's artificial intelligence conference, the "Little Red Box", unmanned intelligent recycling machine, was unveiled in the product display area of the Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Conference.
The "Little Red Box" is a small internet-enabled self-service recycling machine built by youdemai, a second-hand product recycling brand. The reporters recently saw this "Little Red Box" being debugged at the Shanghai Chenjun Network Technology Co., Ltd. inside the Changyang Campus.
It is a small terminal (36*36*26 cm) that contains 8 separate spaces. It utilizes AI smart detection system, combined with the Sesame Credit Risk Control System, to achieve full self-service recycling. User can access the recycling transaction system by scanning the QR code with the Alipay on his/her mobile phone, and complete the whole process of second-hand product recycling from online valuation, order placing to delivery and payment. After an order is placed, the user only needs to "feed" the used product to the "Little Red Box", and the payment will be made within seconds. In case of large-sized devices such as a notebook computer, you can choose to mail it or have it collected at your home and complete subsequent procedures.
According to statistics, in China, only about 20% of electronic devices are recycled and reused, while less than 2% of mobile phones are recycled. "The rate of recycling is very low. On the one hand, people's awareness of environmental protection is not strong enough. On the other hand, it is difficult to find recycling channels, and the recycling process is inconvenient. And the risk involved in recycling also plays a part," said Wang Weitao, founder of the Shanghai Chenjun Network Technology Co., Ltd. Targeting these pain points, the company developed the "Little Red Box" offline project, creating an offline linkage to its original online platform on xianyu.com to make the recycling of used electronic products more convenient and efficient.
To tackle the issue of privacy violation associated with the sale and purchase of second-hand electronic products, the "Little Red Box" is equipped with information security control and data erasing technology, which can protect personal privacy and prevent transaction information leak during the recycling process. In addition, youdemai also cooperates with third-party insurers to offer insurance coverage for both the product and the payment, protecting the interest of both the "Little Red Box" users and channel partners. Compared with traditional C2C transactions, the "Little Red Box" can effectively reduce such risks as damage during transportation, fraud in offline transactions, and malicious price reduction by sellers.
On the valuation page, you can see that the current recycling price is about 5,000 yuan for a well-functioning iPhone X. So how do we price the phones "fed" to the "Little Red Box"? "First, we act as a middleman. We set unified prices for phones according to market conditions, and erase all personal data on the phones before reselling them, making sure that users can receive prompt payment. At this stage, we mainly tackle the high communication and screening costs in C2C transactions, as well as the lack of transparency in prices. Currently, our profit mainly comes from price difference." But Wang Weitao told reporters that with the development of its business, the company is gradually transforming into a service provider. "As a third-party platform, we would conduct standardized testing on mobile phones, find the highest bids in all C-side channels, and help our users sell their mobile phones. We will feedback this information to our users and charge a certain percentage of service fees." The higher the selling price, the more profit for us.
It is said that about 1,000 units of "Little Red Box" have been deployed, mainly in Jiangsu and Zhejiang Provinces. In a small store with about 100 customers per day, the turnover rate of the "Little Red Box" can reach 2%. Given the average recycling price of mobile phone is 600 yuan, the monthly recycling volume amounts to about 36,000 yuan.
It is worth mentioning that in addition to a variety of second-hand products that can be sold for money, the "Little Red Box" can also recycle waste batteries, medicines and other special categories that are difficult to handle, further promoting recycling and environmental protection through professional channels and recycling mechanism.
