Using Discarded Laptop Batteries To Power Lights

mrspoonsi sends news of an IBM study (PDF) which found that discarded laptop batteries could be used to power lights in areas where there's little or no electrical grid. Of the sample IBM tested, 70% of the used batteries were able to power an LED light for more than four hours every day throughout an entire year. The concept was trialed in the Indian city of Bangalore this year. The adapted power packs are expected to prove popular with street vendors, who are not on the electric grid, as well as poor families living in slums. The IBM team created what they called an UrJar — a device that uses lithium-ion cells from the old batteries to power low-energy DC devices, such as a light. The researchers are aiming to help the approximately 400 million people in India who are off grid.

Comments

What happens to these at the true end-of-life?

[JonathanR]

Do the communities who benefit from the secondary-use life of these batteries have the infrastructure and culture to properly recycle the materials; or will they end up in landfill/discarded into the environment?

Re:What happens to these at the true end-of-life?

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're saying that spending a bunch of energy recycling them so that we can get another use out of them is better somehow than just not spending that energy at all and reusing it?

Why is it that people think that recycling is somehow better than reusing.

Re:American wastefulness at its finest

[saloomy]

As soon as you get off the internet, turn off your air conditioner, hang up your telephone, and adjust your diet to compensate for the lack of food on your table, all provided by the ingenuity of America, you ungrateful POS. Wherever you are from, it doesn't matter, it hasn't been as productive, efficient, or as innovative as here in America