Disposable vs. Rechargeable Batteries

By Michael Bloch

Green Living Tips.com

I wouldn't call myself a gadget freak, but in my work and given I spend a good deal of time away from a mains power supply, I use a lot of battery powered equipment. I started using rechargeables some years back and it's definitely saved me a lot of cash.

But what about the environment?

I guess it's a bit of a no-brainer that if you use one of something compared to a zillion, it's got to be better for the planet, but not if the one of something is one zillion and one times toxic :). So I decided to take a look at how rechargeable batteries stack up against their disposable counterparts.

Disposable and rechargeable battery types

Disposable, or dry-cell batteries are usually the alkaline type. They used to contain very high levels of mercury, but the amounts used have greatly decreased over the last couple of decades and some brands use none at all. Still, many do contain a small amount of mercury and given the massive waste involved should be avoided, or at the very least, recycled. In 2006, 40 billion disposable batteries were sold worldwide! According to the EPA, Americans purchase nearly 3 billion dry-cell disposable batteries every year.

Unfortunately, it can be difficult finding places that will actually recycle disposable alkaline batteries. Many recyclers separate them from rechargeables and they do wind up in landfill anyway.

A service I came across in the USA for alkaline (and rechargeable) battery recycling is Big Green Box, which is just a box you can dump batteries into and when it's full, send it back to the recycler. You can purchase a box for your home or office, or utilize one that's in one of the participating stores mentioned on their site.

Button batteries are a problem as a great deal of metal is used for their comparatively small size and they can contain mercury, silver, cadmium, lithium, or other heavy metals as their main component. Thankfully, due to the increasing price of raw materials, these are a desired recyclable item.

Rechargeable batteries used to be quite environmentally toxic beasties, containing cadmium (NiCad batteries). These days the most commonly sold batteries are Nickel-metal-hydride (NiMH). NiMH batteries have a better life and performance than Nicads and don't contain as toxic heavy metals, so they are a "greener" choice.

If you own a notebook, it's likely the battery in it is Lithium-ion. These are the top of the line in terms of performance and the type we'll see in cars of the future. Again, a more environmentally friendly option than NiCads.

You can also buy rechargeable alkaline batteries, but these peform poorly and will cost you more in the long run - and you'll create more waste.

Regardless of the lower environmental toxicity of today's rechargeable batteries, they should definitely be recycled rather than thrown in the bin to wind up in landfill.

Where to recycle rechargeable batteries

If you're in the USA or Canada, try Call2Recycle, the Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporation (RBRC) program's web site for further information.

In Australia, BatteryWorld stores offer a free service.

In the UK, there's a free recycling program called BatteryBack

Environmental savings

According to a study by Uniross carried out in 2007, the production of rechargeable batteries have the following advantages over disposables (comparing serviceable life):

- 23 times less potential impact on non-renewable natural resources
- 28 times less potential impact on global warming
- 30 times less potential impact on air pollution (ozone pollution)
- 9 times less potential impact on air acidification
- 2 times less potential impact on water pollution

Getting the most from rechargeable batteries

I made a few mistakes using rechargeable batteries in the beginning, so I offer the following tips so you might avoid the same. These simple tips will help ensure you get the maximum life from your rechargeables

- If you're going to buy rechargeables - keep track of them :). Being small critters, batteries are easier to lose. Given that a rechargeable battery in itself is more toxic to the environment than a single disposable alkaline; if you keep losing them and keep buying more, it defeats the purpose. Have a central point in the house or your car where you store flat ones. I also mark each battery set (eg. mb1, mb2, mb3, mb4) so there's equal 'wear', rather than mixing old ones with new ones.

- Avoid using the batteries at high temperatures and store out of direct sunlight

- Recharge regularly

- Avoid overcharging the rechargeable battery

Cost savings

As mentioned, you can not only lighten your environmental footprint, but save a ton of cash by using rechargeable batteries.

A pack of 4 rechargeable batteries I purchased a short while ago cost me around $20. They'll be good for at least 500 recharges, likely more. A battery charger costs anywhere from about $10 -$30. The cost to recharge the set works out to to be just a couple of cents each time. So, in total, even factoring in the charger, a set of 4 AA will cost around $50 for their serviceable life.

A comparable set of heavy duty disposables cost around $2 - and that's at a discount price. The equivalent usage would cost $1000!

Environmentally and financially, rechargeable batteries just make more sense. If you can, try ditching your disposable battery habit and reap the rewards.

For more columns and tips, visit www.GreenLivingTips.com. Green Living Tips is an online resource powered by renewable energy offering a wide variety of earth friendly tips, green guides, advice and environment related news to help consumers and business reduce costs, consumption and environmental impact.

Green Living Tips: Green Your Computer Use

Michael Bloch
Green Living Tips.com

Computing has changed the world - a great example is the Internet. It's hard to imagine either not existing.

While computer usage can actually lessen our environmental footprint, for example, being able to work from home or control of farm irrigation and many other tasks, the energy consumption involved with casual computing and gaming generally is massive.

There's not just the actual computer usage related electricity consumption, there's also all the millions of tons of plastic and metal used to create the billions of computers in their various forms now on this planet.

We can all do our bit in lessening our impact and the following are tips for more earth friendly computing, some of which will also save you cash!

- When not in use for extended periods, switch your computer off at the wall to avoid phantom power load consumption.

- Have your power saving/management options enabled and properly configured for periods when your computer is temporarily not in use. In Windows, this can be found in Settings/Control Panel/Power Options

- During usage, only have your screen as bright as you need it - unneccesarily bright screens really chew the juice

- If you're going to use a screen saver, use a blank (black) screen - animated screen savers just consume electricity unnecessarily.

- When buying components and peripheral items, try to choose those that come in the least amount of plastic packaging as possible.

- For your next computer, consider a notebook instead of desktop - these use under 50% the electricity of a desktop machine

- If you can afford it, buy extended warranty with your new system so there's less likelihood of you needing to junk the computer within the first few years if an expensive repair is needed.

- Do you really need a 22 inch screen? When considering your next screen purchase, balance your wants with your actual needs.

- Before purchasing a new computer, consider upgrading the hardware in your current machine. Some extra RAM (memory) or a new hard drive may be all you need to restore life to your current system. According to this site, the energy needed to churn out a new computer is enough to power a system for a decade!

- Following on from the above point; it's not uncommon for Windows to get slower as time goes on. This isn't necessarily your machine, but software bloat. All the updates, installing and uninstalling of software, applications running in the background that you don't really need take their toll and basically clog your machine up; seriously impacting on performance, which in turn is more wear and tear on hardware and increase electricity consumption. Consider doing a reinstallation of Windows and your software. A lean machine will sip less electricity and peform much better.

- When you do replace your current computer system, donate it rather than bin it if possible. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, e-waste is now the fastest growing aspect of the municipal waste stream. You can find places to donate your computer to on Earth911.org

- Consider a refurbished computers for your next purchase. These aren't dusty old machines that have just been wiped over; often they are display models or recent purchase returns with very little wear and tear that are thoroughly checked before sale, and often have the same guarantee that new units do. You can save a ton of cash this way!

The computer recycling problem

While putting a computer in for recycling isn't the worst step your could take, it's important to remember that e-cycling (recycling of electrical components) is a bit of a minefield.

Sometimes they aren't recycled at all and in some instances your computer could be shipped to China (more emissions in transportation) where poorly equipped and impoverished people are set the gruelling task of stripping down the systems and reclaiming some of the precious metals. It's nasty and highly toxic work and just another instance whereby we've been outsourcing our pollution.

If you are going to recycle your machine, check the recycler out - ask about their practices; for example, if the system will be stripped down locally and in safe/environmentally responsible conditions. Also try to keep as many components as you can as backups - for example, the mouse and keyboard.

I learned this the hard way recently when disposing of some equipment, only to find out it wound up in landfill due to the recycler having too many computers.

Green Living Tips is an online resource powered by renewable energy offering a wide variety of earth friendly tips, green guides, advice and environment related news to help consumers and business reduce costs, consumption and environmental impact on the planet. For more information and columns, visit www.greenlivingtips.com.

Eco-friendly book reading

By Michael Bloch

Green Living Tips.com

While I spend most of my working life reading words on a screen, I love to read for enjoyment also - it's one of my great pleasures in life. It does come at an environmental cost however, namely the trees felled, the chemical processes used and the fossil fuel in transporting the book to me.

And the cost is a lot higher than I originally thought.

Angela over at EcoBrain, an online store that sells a wide selection environmentally themed e-books, passed on a couple of interesting statistics about paper production she gained from the Palo Alto Research Center. Among them, that it takes about the equivelent 60 watt-hours of energy to produce one piece of paper. A single sheet. That's not even taking into account the printing and shipping footprint.

According to Conservatree, a ton of (non-recycled) printing and office paper uses 24 trees; based on a mix of softwood and hardwood trees 40 feet tall and 6-8 inches in diameter.

Angela also mentioned that with the increasing trend towards overseas printing, many books are now printed in Asia, shipped to a local port, trucked to a distribution center and then shipped to a store or to your home if you purchased online.

Even if the paper for the book was sourced locally, pulp and paper is the third largest industrial polluter to air, water, and land in Canada and the United States, releasing well over 100 million kg (220 million pounds) of toxic pollution each year.

Here in Australia, we ship millions of tons of wood chips to Asia each year, which is then turned into paper that we buy back, which means another round of shipping.

While sustainable forestry practices are great, whichever way you look at it, our book reading does have a mighty impact.

So what to do? I really don't want to give up my reading, so I've modified a few habits, and as a nice bonus, it saves money!

If you're a bookworm like me, here's some things you can do to lighten your book reading impact on the environment:

Library
Community and local government libraries have changed a lot since I was a kid, generally speaking, they are no longer the final resting places of uninteresting material. Libraries are increasingly hooked into central databases, so if the book you're chasing isn't in one location, you can ask for it to be brought in. Many libraries offer free membership, but even ones that charge often only cost less than the price of a single best selling novel.

Book swapping
Many people amass their own personal libraries over the years; so talk with your friends and colleagues about book swapping possibilities. Online swapping services such as BookMooch offer hundreds of thousands of titles and works on a points system whereby you get credits for each book you offer to swap that you can use to gain other books.

Book exchanges
These stores are still around, sadly though they do seem to be disappearing. This is how we'd get our comics when we were kids. We'd buy a stack, read them and then get credit on our next purchase. Book exchange stores are also vastly cheaper even if you don't have any books to exchange.

Clearance sales
You'll find many books, be they best sellers or otherwise, have leftovers after the final print run, or the store simply orders too many. The publisher or store will offer these at bargain prices. By buying these books, you aren't adding to demand, rather addressing surplus that needs to be gotten rid of anyway.

Buying online?
When you think of buying books online, most likely the name Amazon springs to mind. When checking out books of interest look to the right hand side near the top of the main details page and you'll see "More Buying Choices" - underneath should be a link to used copies for sale.

Flea markets
Go to any flea market and you're bound to come across hundreds of books offered by different vendors; and usually as cheap as chips.

Ebooks
Ebooks, or electronic books, have come a long way in recent years; they are now a lot more user friendly. About 1 hour of energy spent on a laptop computer reading an ebook equals the amount of energy expended to create just 4 sheets of paper. If you like to read books on living green, why not take it a step further and read them in a greener way too! EcoBrain is a new site offering ebooks only, hundreds of titles mainly on environmental and social issues. In addition to saving trees, ebooks are also extremely portable and you can fit thousands on your computer hard drive!

Exert pressure on publishers and authors
The print industry is in big trouble due to electronic media and escalating costs. Sometimes an electronic book just mightn't be convenient for you; so if paper books are something you will continue to buy, write to publishing houses and authors about the paper issue - ask them to consider recycled content or treeless paper. If you're prepared to pay extra for such a product, let them know that too. If thousands of people do this, it will have publishers and authors seriously considering it.

Well, it's getting late here now, so I'm off to bed to read an end of print run best seller by Dean Koontz whose book I picked up for $5 instead of the $30 price tag it had a couple of years ago!

Saving trees, saving money - everyone wins.. except for book stores perhaps ;). Umm, Dean, love your work, but a word in your ear about the paper if I may...

For more stories about living eco-friendly, visit www.greenlivingtips.com.

Kids & Computers

Editor's Note: Here's another interesting article from Michael Bloch at Green Living Tips.com, an online resource powered by renewable energy offering a wide variety of earth friendly tips, green guides, advice and environment related news to help consumers and business reduce costs, consumption and environmental impact on the planet.

While it's "relatively" easy to get young kids to turn off lights once they are finished using them, getting them to turn of the computer is another matter.

A typical desktop computer uses around 130 watts of power, so it's not inconsequential. Even if you have power-saving options turned on; it can still drag on the juice - standby and phantom power loads contribute up to 10% of electricity consumption in US homes.

I received an email a few hours ago from Doug Hannah, a student at Stanford University Design School, who is working with a team that's trying to help families incorporate environmentally friendly computing into their lives.

They've recently developed a tool to greatly simplify the process of shutting down a computer. One of the problems with getting children to switching a computer off "properly" is not only that it can be complex for young 'uns, but it's, well, boring - not fast enough. Click on this, wait, click on that, wait again.

The Stanford team have designed Turn Off Tool, an application in an easily understandable format for children - all it takes is one click on the sleepy moon image and the computer will hibernate or completely shut down depending on the setting you specify.

You can set the application to start up when your computer does or launch it yourself when the kids get on the computer so it's ready for them to use when they are done. It seems like a small thing, but all these little lessons help our children learn to become good environmental stewards.

The application is free and you can download it from TurnOffTool.com


-- By Michael Bloch, Green Living Tips.com