Don’t Have Green Electronics? Make Them Green!

If you didn’t purchase the latest in green electronics, you can make them green quite easily.  Powering your electronics with rechargeable batteries makes all of your electronics eco-friendly.

Every year in the world 15 billion batteries are manufactured.  Only a very small fraction of the batteries made are from recycled batteries.  It takes a whole lot of fossil fuels and other resources to manufacture batteries and most people just toss them in the trash when the batteries have kicked the bucket.

Batteries are recyclable and there are more and more battery recycling plants popping up as people begin to realize that they can make a good impact on the environment by not throwing them away.  But even the process of recycling batteries uses up our resources at an alarming rate; just not as alarming as making new batteries.

Make a small investment into some rechargeable batteries and a battery charger.  A good battery charger will cost less than $50.  Rechargeable batteries are more expensive than alkaline batteries, but they will pay for themselves the first time you recharge and reuse them.  And you don’t have to spend hundreds of dollars replacing all of your batteries with rechargeable ones right away.  Have some on hand and replace the old batteries in your electronics as they die.

A note about rechargeable batteries that you should be aware of.  Rechargeable batteries will lose anywhere from 15% to 60% of their power within a month of sitting around in storage.  One way to keep your rechargeable batteries good and powered up is to store them in the freezer.  Heat makes the power drain faster.  Just make sure to allow the batteries to sit for a while when you take them out of the freezer.  You want them to be at room temperature when you put them into your electronics.

There are two kinds of rechargeable batteries to look for.  Lithium Ion (Li-ion) batteries, which are used for things like notebook computers and cell phones, and Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) batteries, which are usually standard sized batteries like AA and D.  Anything else is a disposable battery and won’t charge in your battery charger no matter how long you leave them in.