How do you dispose of batteries?

Smoke and mirrors baby, smoke and mirrors. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. It is not really a problem , what you actually experienced was a flame up of swamp gas , ignited by lighting and exploding weather balloons that created the illusion of a problem. Uh-huh. I must be an idiot as this is one I just can’t wrap my brain around, without subjecting everyone around me to a 15 minute diatribe and making my blood pressure spike through the roof.

Everything in the World today either does or can run on batteries. Well, everything is a fairly strong word, but in a general sense I just mean that a bunch of stuff is designed to have battery support or have batteries as the primary power supply. Cars, flashlights, computer accessories, laptops, watches, cell phones, smoke and CO2 detectors, laser pointers, power tools, wireless printers, radios, you name it , and they all can and do run on batteries. Many things are designed to be portable devices that can’t be hooked up to the power grid at all and must be powered by batteries. Literally millions of items, every year are designed and sold that run on batteries. On top of that, they are developing newer batteries every year that are bigger, stronger, faster and can be recharged more and have bigger amounts of the chemicals in them that everyone says is the problem, including the battery makers.

You understand my point ? Look around your house and go from room to room and think about all the things in your house that run on batteries. If you are anything like us, you have 3 or 4 items in just about every room .

So, not to belabor this introductory point, but ya know, batteries are everywhere, in virtually everything. I’ll bet just in my house and surroundings there are over 100 batteries in use in dozens of applications.

Now think about this.

Every social activist that has ever been in the media (television, newspapers, the Internet, anywhere) goes on and on blah, blah, blah until I just want to smack em with a ball peen hammer, about how electric cars and battery powered items are “Greener” and how they are better for the environment, because they “reduce dependence on fossil fuels”. In the same breath they smugly buy their little electric cars that get 300 miles to the charge and make their own energy while braking and use less “fossil fuels” and all sort of other assorted nonsense until you just get sick of hearing some blathering idiot go on and on about the subject.

Here’s what I don’t get. E’splain this one to me Lucy.

If electric cars are the answer and having things run on batteries (or have the capability to) is the answer, then why oh why do you also see television commercials that say “Don’t throw batteries in the trash.”?

To me this is not a mutually exclusive deal. You can’t have one without the other. If you use batteries, they eventually wear out and have to be disposed of. No-Brainer. If you think the answer to “Global Warming” (or at least part of the answer) is to have an electric car, that runs on batteries, then you also must acknowledge that having worn out batteries left over when they wear out is a smaller problem than the fossil fuel being used prior to the batteries was in the first place. Where do you think the batteries are gonna go when they have to be replaced in your “Greener car” and the literally MILLIONS of batteries produced and used in just this country alone, every year, wear out and have to be disposed of?. You can’t eat them, they don’t really degrade to harmless materials over time (like a biodegradable sack will) and they eventually always wear out and have to be replaced or thrown away. What happens to your greener car’s batteries when it is in a high speed accident or gets hit by a train?

How is a battery greener when it takes fossil fuels to produce it, fossil fuels to recharge it, fossil fuels to transport it to the assembly plants, fossil fuels to clean up after it and it creates an enormously problematic disposal problem when they wear out , have to be replaced or are damaged ? The next question is pretty simple too, Just how in the heck am I supposed to dispose of them, when no alternative is available ? Does anything in your DOGMA dialog have any kind of answer to that ? Sorry to rain on your parade and everything , but, everything has a lifecycle and no matter how shiny and new it is today, tomorrow it will wear out and be a candidate for the trash bin. I can’t eat them, burn them, bury them or throw them away, so what in god’s name do you propose I do with them when they are worn out? Stockpile the used ones until they start leaking into the groundwater? I could stick em up an activists butt, however they would then be toxic and the problem would still be there anyway. But I digress.

I live in a very small town, the landfill here doesn’t take batteries knowingly (especially car type batteries), the trash company provides 1 (one) disposal cart for all trash items, and there is no facility for recycling of batteries (let alone much of anything else) anywhere around my house, within 250 miles . Also, they do not look at the trash when it is being dumped into the truck by the one man claw machine so I suspect this is happening in just about every area of the country as well.

Every single store you walk into however has huge battery displays and we sell the crap out of batteries for every imaginable use in every imaginable size, shape color and for every possible purpose.

Nowhere on that display or any display the manufacturers provide tell you what to do with the batteries when they wear out though do they ? Their point of view is “You bought it, you figure it out.” They only make them, they are not responsible for them when they wear out.

If we aren’t supposed to throw them away in the trash, the manufactures can’t tell you what to do with them, and there is nowhere to dispose of them “properly “and we are encouraged to be responsible and help save the planet ,then here is the question : ” WHAT IN THE HECK WOULD YOU HAVE US DO WITH THEM INSTEAD ? (besides saying to ourselves “whatever” as we toss them into a trash bag?)

Answer that question and provide a solution that makes any sense at all and I’ll do it. Hell, I’ll bet everybody would do it.

Until them just shut up about your “Greener is better” philosophy because you don’t have a clue and haven’t thought about the entire problem in the first place. You are just repeating the marketing that is designed to sell more batteries. I don’t have windmill in my backyard and haven’t figured out a way to be able to afford the enormous costs of installing Solar energy either.

Of course If I did have a windmill or solar panels , the energy is ………stored for use…….. later in ,…..wait for it, wait for it….a BATTERY !

Imagine that.

Thankx for reading my rant !

bigmike

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