The Redbox machine was stuck to the concrete. More accurately, there was a single bolt holding the hulking Redbox to the concrete ground, and the team trying to haul it away couldn’t access it. So the Junkluggers trash removal team has been trying to break the front door open because the manager of the Dollar General store that has been the Redbox’s home doesn’t have the key. If the team can get the front door open, maybe they will be able to access the bolt.
They tried bashing the lock with a crowbar, prying the door open from the top and the sides, and angle grinding the door off. Rory Agor, who managed the junk lugging team that day, at one point hopped on top of the machine to try to get more leverage. Still, the machine was stuck.
Then, a junk lugger named Ambrose shook the machine back and forth. It fell over. The bolt broke. The machine was freed. “The back end was loose, but we couldn’t get to the front end, so I just pushed it over,” Ambrose says.
Junk lugging requires creative thinking.
It was a sunny morning in early November, and I had come to the Dollar General in Santa Ana, California to take a last look at a DVD-renting time capsule before it heads to its final resting place, a plant called SA Recycling, which will shred it into zillions of pieces. Junkluggers, a company founded in Connecticut that now has franchises all over the country, is collecting about 3,900 Redbox machines around the country and taking them to recycling centers after the bankruptcy of its parent company. Once ubiquitous in front of and inside grocery stores and convenience stores all over the country, Redbox DVD rental kiosks are now being disposed of en masse after the company that ran it went bankrupt and abandoned them.
Junkluggers has partnered with retailers and liquidation companies who work with Walmart, Dollar General, Costco, Publix, and a few other big chain stores to disconnect and dispose of Redbox kiosks that have been left abandoned.
“Every single one we pick up is going to a recycling center. The DVDs are being removed and then either rehomed or donated. We’re finding that assisted living centers and religious facilities are interested in taking the DVDs,” Justin Waltz, the brand president of Junkluggers, told 404 Media. “Our mission is clean and responsible e-waste.”
Junkluggers’ operation has popped up alongside the community of people who have been trying to convince store managers around the company to let them take Redbox machines home. If we’re thinking about the four Rs: Reduce, reuse, recycle, repair, then the DIYers are the repairers and reusers, whereas Junkluggers and the processing centers they will take the Redboxes to are handling the recycling. The unceremonious end of Redbox is a reminder of how much stuff we make and buy, and how, when companies fail to plan for end-of-life or go out of business, they often leave a bunch of devices that suddenly become e-waste behind.
“I guess it seems easier or less risky to shred obsolete equipment, even when there are people who still want it,” Nathan Proctor, senior director of consumer rights group US PIRG’s right to repair campaign told me. “But as electronic waste surges, we can’t keep doing this over and over again. “
Jason Koebler
More than 2,000 people have joined the Redbox Tinkering Discord over the last few weeks. Every day, new people say they’ve been able to convince stores around the country to let them take home a Redbox device, but it seems to be getting harder to find units. For a while, people were reliably getting them from Walgreens stores, but people on that Discord server have reported that it’s become harder to convince store managers to let people take them. Walgreens corporate told 404 Media in an email “I can tell you we are not giving to customers and will dispose of them responsibly.”
The bankruptcy of Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, Redbox’s parent company, has left retailers around the country struggling to figure out what to do with the more than 24,000 abandoned machines. A bankruptcy court filing by Golub, which operates two chains of stores called Price Chopper and Market 32 in New York, said that it had more than 150 Redbox machines to dispose of, and that Redbox owed it nearly $20,000 in unpaid commissions.
“Redbox failed to provide hardware and software support, maintenance and repairs, and maintain the Kiosks in an attractive good state of repair,” the filing stated. “The burden of these costs now fall on Golub.” The filing also contains an email from May from Redbox that said “Things will be business as usual; however, given the capital shortfall, I am afraid my Field Service Team will not be able to assist with kiosk removals or relocations at this present time.” The court filing suggests this is the last Golub heard from Redbox. Similar petitions seeking permission to dispose of the Redbox kiosks have been filed by a handful of other companies, including 7-Eleven.
The Redbox contract prevented stores from doing any maintenance for the devices, and Agor from Junkluggers said that stores don’t have keys to get inside of them, which is why his team was trying to bash the lock off in order to open the kiosk to reach the final bolt. The Redbox Tinkering community has been creating and buying keys to open the Redbox machines from a few places online. One tinkerer has mapped the locking mechanism in a CAD program for people who are trying to make their own keys.
The Junkluggers’ removal operation caused a few Dollar General customers to stop and stare.
“I used one a long time ago,” Ambrose said. “They’re mostly outdated, which is why people don’t use them anymore. It’s almost like Blockbuster days.”
“Little more difficult than I thought,” Agor said, referring to the job of removing the Redbox. “Could have been worse I guess. It’s just teamwork getting everything done. These jobs are more unique than anything. A lot of jobs we go to are just a few item pickups, we’re in and out in a few minutes. Definitely see a lot of different things on this job. ”
The team loads the Redbox onto a dolly and pushes it into the Junkluggers trailer. They shut the door behind it and drive off to take the Redbox to its next life as repurposed metal.
