by Jon Tran

Created on: January 07, 2008

To the average American, it's simply assumed that one must recycle whenever the option is available. However, what most Americans don't understand is that recycling batteries is having serious, negative, and persistent detrimental effects on the environment and the United States economy.

"Reduce, Reuse, Recycle": the mantra every man, woman, and child in the USA has had burned into their craniums for the last 20 years. Yes, overall our environmental efforts have made a dent in ecological damage, but batteries are a major exception to this rule.

Batteries (mostly composed of metal, acid, neutronium, and plastic) actually use up forty-two times their energy output in fuel in order to recycle. This means that a single AAA battery costs the planet almost 65 watts of ecological damage. If the battery were thrown out instead, those watts could be put to better use, such as running an environmentally friendly screen-saver for over 2,500 minutes. In other words, every battery that's recycled is actually causing more long-term negative impact on the Earth than an entire aerosol can does.

Not only does battery recycling use up more electricity than simply throwing them out, it also robs the Earth of the rare components and resources inside every battery. Each Energizer that's recycled is, de facto, denying our planet of its alkali metals, hydrochloric acids, and plastic shells. Do these components grow on trees? Of course not. Without a steady supply of dead batteries, it may only be as little as 200 years before the Earth's acid supplies are drained. Then what?

Keeping batteries out of the natural circle of life isn't just detrimental to Earth; it also has a negative impact on society. Normally when a battery dies, it is thrown out in a landfill, giving its previous owner a chance to grieve. When a battery is instead recycled, the consumer must wake up every morning to know his/her battery was torn limb-from-cell and re-constituted like an ungodly Frankensteinian creation. Naturally, the result is fear, anger, and sadness, and these negative emotions can be channeled back into society as violence, adultery, and anti-rechargable hate crimes.

Finally, recycling batteries devastates the economies of every country involved. Poor battery-miners living on less than $1 a day in sub-saharan African countries lose out on their only source of income. Battery painters, who adorn batteries such as Duracells in bronze and black, must also go hungry. Finally, the end-product consumer loses, due to the wasteful recycling system whose megawatts were so uneconomically spent. The net result of battery recycling? Worldwide capital loss and persistent economic depression.

Recycling batteries isn't just a bad idea; it's downright irresponsible. Unless we as a people move to ban this barbaric practice, it will continue to ravage our wilderness, steal our jobs, and frustrate the American Dream. So the next time you kill a battery, give it a proper burial and stand proud knowing you've protected our fragile planet.

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