Recycling takes time and effort, which is a major factor in driving down recycling rates as people are not willing to invest this time and effort into separating their waste. This is particularly true of more complicated products such as electronics, but at the same time, those are the most promising targets for recycling. The E-waste Arcade is a way to incentivise recycling by offering gaming machines that don't run on coins, but on waste. People can put their waste into the machines, which are made from recycled electronics, to get rewarded with time playing a number of games on the arcade machine.

The recycling rate of electronic goods can be low because of a relatively high burden to actually bring back electronic goods to stores, where they could be recycled. This is unfortunate because electronic consumer goods have particularly high-value materials, such as rare minerals. Additionally, many electronics are not being thrown away because they are broken, but because they are outdated, so they would be of particularly high reuse value.

E-waste Arcades created a system that makes recycling fun: They produce arcade gaming machines that don't operate on coins, but on old electronics. In order to play on an E-waste Arcade machine, players throw waste into a gaming machine and are rewarded with the ability to play up to six games. The machines themselves are also made from recycled electronics and sustainably sourced wood.