Our Throwaway Society

My recent experiences of dying drills have alerted me to the need to replace the battery in my husband's drill. It's larger and older than mine, so it's been used much more. The battery will barely hold a charge for a few screw turns now before it dies.

This is no fancy, expensive drill. It's a Skill basic drill model with a Nicad rechargeable battery. I haven't been to Home Depot or Lowe's yet to price a replacement battery, but I just read the following on Consumer Reports:

A cordless drill's battery can be discharged and recharged roughly 500 times before it must be replaced. While batteries can last five years or more, frequent use can deplete them sooner. At $30 to $80 each for many of the batteries that power drills, replacing them can cost as much as buying a new cordless drill.

Battery replacement may be less of a concern if you're buying a $250 drill you plan to keep for a while. And for models that cost less than $100, simply replacing the drill may make more sense than buying a new pair of batteries. Otherwise, consider battery cost along with the drill.

Sort of defeats the purpose of having a rechargeable battery in the first place, doesn't it? You end up creating even more waste by having to buy an entire new drill just to get a battery. It's the same thing with electronics like VCRs and CD players. Our landfills are brimming with products that we toss because they're more expensive to fix than to replace.

As a recycler at heart, that really bothers me. I try to recycle everything that our community sanitation trucks take: paper, aluminum, tin, glass, and certain plastics. I buy many used things at garage sales rather than at stores. I give old clothing and other goods to friends or to the Goodwill rather than throw them away. And even in the workshop, I try to recycle. Just ask my husband--he gets so frustrated because I try to save every little scrap of wood! (Well, they sometimes DO come in handy!)

I hope the tool industry does its part to change this course. I, for one, will be looking carefully at my next tool purchase to see how environmentally friendly it is. If we all did that, maybe the landfills would be a little less crowded.