Save Money at Pinchtown.com: Re-Use Weak Alkaline Batteries

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Re-Use Weak Alkaline Batteries

Do you recall the movie, The Princess Bride? At one point, Miracle Max tells Inigo, "There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive."

This is also true of household alkaline batteries. Different devices require different voltage levels to function properly. Your digital camera or your child's video game will stop working once its batteries no longer provide the voltage it needs to operate. Many people then take those batteries and throw them away when they put fresh ones into the device.

However, those "gently used" alkaline batteries are really only "mostly dead" and are very much still "slightly alive." In your house, there are almost certainly some devices that need far less voltage than the camera, video game, or other "high-drain" item from which those "slightly alive" batteries were removed. If you put those same batteries (too weak to power the high-drain device) into one of these items with lower voltage needs, they will work just fine, offering a second use for those batteries, which will save you money by not having to buy so many.

Looking for ideas as to which items may offer a second life for your tired batteries? We've found that remote controls for televisions and stereos require very little voltage from their batteries and can function for months on batteries that could no longer support our high-drain devices. Other ideas include simple AM/FM radios and MP3 players. Some trial and error may be needed to find those devices in your home that will work best with your "slightly alive" batteries.

If you make a practice of re-using your worn batteries, we suggest acquiring a simple volt-meter appropriate for checking the voltage on your batteries so that you can easily see how much life really is left in them. Keep a box where you can store batteries too weak for high-drain devices, but ready for use in a low-drain capacity.

Bottom Line:

Save about $10.00 per year.*
(*Individual results will vary. Calculations based on approximate savings of 24 batteries costing $.40 each.)

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