Lighten Your Travel Bag on Earth Day With USB-Rechargeable Batteries

April 22, 2009 at 10:46 AM | by Omri | 0 Comments

You drive a Prius. You own a reusable grocery bag. You're able to explicate - at length - the nuances of the organic vs. localism debate. But for some reason Earth Day still fills you with guilt. You're pretty good about the whole environmentalism thing when you're at home. But when you're on the road you sometimes let nature take a backseat to convenience.

Let Jaunted unburden you with a few suggestions about battery-using peripherals. Help us help you.

We've already expressed our love for all things USB-chargeable when it comes to travel electronics. The advantages of making sure that your peripherals can be recharged that way run the gamut from less clutter to a lighter backpack to a more universal charging scheme. But there are some devices that still need batteries.

Some of those you can give up when you're out of the house - external mice don't need to come with you on your trip to Europe. But if your camera takes AA batteries then you need double AA batteries. And if you're in certain European cities - or you've traipsed off into the countryside - that could be a genuine problem.

Enter USBCELL's rechargeable batteries ($17.46 on Amazon.) These are AA batteries with a top that flips open to reveal a USB plug. Insert the plug into a USB port, wait about five hours, and the batteries will recharge to about 90 percent. If you don't have five hours you can charge them partially and still use them - the marketing blurb brags about how "intelligent charging circuitry" means that the batteries won't lose capacity. In the unlikely scenario where you have a regular battery charger but no USB port, you can recharge them as you would any other rechargeable battery.

If you've already built up a collection of rechargeable batteries and don't need any more, something like the Sanyo Eneloop USB charger($12.04 on Amazon) might be the way to go. Plug the batteries into the charger, plug the charger into a USB port, and in a few hours you're gloating to your Whole Foods shopping companion about how you're not only helping the environment but you're also saving money.

It's one more peripheral than you'd otherwise be carrying - keeping that much farther from travel gadget Nirvana - but it's still better than the old-fashioned approach of using up a battery and then just sending it off to a landfill. Seriously. Why not just club a baby seal, skin it, and then use the hide to strangle an endangered owl?

Related Stories:
· Options for Minimizing All Your Travel Gadget Chargers [Jaunted]
· USBCELL Rechargeable Batteries [Amazon.com]
· Sanyo Eneloop USB charger [Amazon.com]

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