Swap-o-Matic vending machine fosters a culture of barter economy

Everyone might have used a vending machine for some purpose. Vending machines, on inserting money, dispense a cup of coffee or soda, book, a pair of headsets and other items. But here is a great way the concept of vending machine has been harnessed to reuse, recycle and trade things with people in your community. The machine, called the Swap-o-Matic, lets you trade products in style of the erstwhile barter system. Well, you can put old or unused stuff in the machine and take home something you want instead.

Swap-o-Matic

The New York City-based designer Lina Fenequito has designed the Swap-o-Matic vending machine. It is simply meant to let people recycle stuffs that they no longer want and get fresh things instead. The entire transactions are money-free deals. Once you put things inside the machine, it brings you credits, which you can use to take a new item from the collections that are donated by others.

To make use of the service, you just have to create an account on Swap-o-Matic by entering your email ID through its touchscreen interface. As you make a new account, you get three free credits. After that, each item you donate brings you a credit. Thus, you can pile up credits disposing a variety of items in the shelves of the vending machine. Finally, you can take other interesting items from the collection for free of cost.

Its designer Fenequito has long been a supporter of sustainable living and responsible consumption of resources. Indeed, the revolutionary vending machine has been designed with a goal to nurture the culture of recycling and reusing among people. The system will largely help the earth from not getting dumped with much more garbage in future.

According to Fenequito, people used to follow a blind culture of consuming and buying new products. They don’t consider the social and ecological outcomes of such an ingrained mindset toward purchasing. The Swap-o-Matic vending machine humorously jeers at our addiction to “immediacy, instant gratification and convenience,” writes Fenequito on the Swap-o-Matic’s website.

The Swap-o-Matic website reveals a bitter reality that the U.S.A, which has only 6 percent of the world’s population, consumes 30 percent of its resources. So these kinds of technologies are expected to raise awareness among people on the requirement for balanced distribution of resources. People really learn to barter products in a hub, which will also let them save much money to buy new products.

The Swap-o-Matic is at present migrating around the New York City. It is located at Launch Pad Brooklyn, Blue Stockings Café in New York. People are highly excited to exchange unused and unwanted items with the fresh ones that others in their community have donated using the vending machine.

Via: GadgetBox