How green are you with your "used" AA cells?

[RI Chevy]

Where can I get/buy the white topped Japan made duracell precharged batteries?

I got mine at Walmart. They sell both the black and white topped batteries. I think I am the only one that goes in and takes all the packages off the rack until I find the white topped cells.
Several drug store chains also carry them, but they are more expensive. Go with a coupon and they are even better deal!

 

[Wrend]

I get my Eneloops from Thomas Distributing (.com). Good price, and free US shipping on orders over $75.

The regular Eneloops don't have the highest capacity, but they should last a lot longer in cycle life and cumulative lifetime capacity potential than most (all?) other AA and AAA NiMH cells.

Compared to regular primary cells, one Eneloop AA cell (down to 80% usable capacity) can potentially equal 1000 name-brand alkaline AA cells in cumulative lifetime capacity.

I leave mine charged and ready to use in sets that only get used together, so I can just take out the depleted ones from a device, put them on the charger, then put in charged ones without having to wait for anything to charge. Very convenient.

 

[Erzengel]

I wish the big companies would take back batteries to be recycled

Here in Germany (maybe the whole EU), all sellers of all kinds of batteries are required to take them back. Therefore every supermarket has a box where You can dump used up batteries, no matter where You bought them. This makes recycling very easy for consumers. I'm now fully switching to Eneloops (including Eneloop lites) for all devices at home. Now I don't have to look for batteries if one device gets empty, I always have at least one pair of charged AAs and AAAs in my drawer.

 

[GarageBoy]

I wish that was the case in the US

Batteries have a decent amount of recyclable materials in them and there are tons of them out there

 

[czAtlantis]

Does anybody know how do they sort different types of batteries after you throw them in recyclation boxes? I mean alkalines, ni-cd, liion, zinc-carbon...every chemistry has different materials inside and I can't imagine if you have all together how you can recycle new materials from the mix.

 

[fyrstormer]

Does anybody know how do they sort different types of batteries after you throw them in recyclation boxes? I mean alkalines, ni-cd, liion, zinc-carbon...every chemistry has different materials inside and I can't imagine if you have all together how you can recycle new materials from the mix.

That's the recycler's job to worry about. They may very well just read the labels on the batteries, or use computers with cameras that can automatically read the labels very quickly.

 

[Lynx_Arc]

Does anybody know how do they sort different types of batteries after you throw them in recyclation boxes? I mean alkalines, ni-cd, liion, zinc-carbon...every chemistry has different materials inside and I can't imagine if you have all together how you can recycle new materials from the mix.

I would think at the least you would have the following categories
1)nickle based (nimh, nicd)
2)lead based (SLA,AGM,auto/marine batteries)
3)lithium based
4)alkaline zinc etc everything else.
It may be that nicd and nimh are sorted into two categories as nicads are what they want recycled the most followed by lead based batteries.

 

[czAtlantis]

Yes I understand when you have these categories sorted...but how do they distinguish between AA zinc carbon, AA alkaline, AA liion?
I am little affraid it is not "recycle box" but "safely destroy box" - that they don't recycle general household batteries (just car batteries and another large ones) and just safely destroy them.