Save the Environment One Battery At a Time

That wireless keyboard, wireless mouse, and remote control all use double ‘A’ batteries. You know how quickly your devices suck the power down and you have thought about rechargeables as an option, but the price is usually just a little too much. When faced with the choice of money out of pocket, or the environment…which one do you pick?

There is also the lifetime of these reusable batteries. I know the set of four I have stashed in the drawer just doesn’t seem to last near as long as a couple of cheap ass AA’s that come in a 50-pack from Ikea or Home Depot. Not only do those rechargeables not last as long, I swear I charged them just last week and somehow they again are dead from just sitting in the drawer. A no name battery wins out every time, and really many of these cells are from the same manufacturers and just rebranded. The same Kirkland quality at a fraction of the real brand price.

Now to the point of the conversation…you can get a second and third life out of these tubular power packs. If you have rechargeable batteries, you likely have a charger. Pop a couple of those depleted cells in and wait for the magic to happen. Sure you might not get all the original power back in the battery, but you’ll get enough to warrant trying this again and again. I’ve been doing it for years.

Now I know there are warnings saying you shouldn’t do this. I started out of curiosity, to see if the battery really would explode. There was no earth shattering blast. There was no ball of orange or purple fire that lept into the room to set my curtains ablaze. If anything, a couple of those cells might have leaked a little…nothing to write home about. Hardly discouraging.

So scare yourself up a couple of old AA’s and see what life you can breathe back into them. Call it your contribution to reducing non-recyclables. Call it laziness in not taking all those batteries to BestBuy for disposal in their barrel of dead batteries. Maybe you’re just cheap, like me.

If more batteries exploded, I am sure we would hear about it. We will hear about idiots with fireworks this weekend, but not your everyday AAA user.

Chris

Day 78 Share your Pit Stank With The World With Battery Powered Fans