I used to buy rechargable batteries, back when that was a thing.

Two of the major battery brands in the United States—Ray-o-Vac, and Energizer—both manufactured rechargeable batteries, and there may be others who do so. The schtick was, you had to buy the charger and plug it into a convenient wall socket, then you could, in theory, keep recharging the batteries for years. Of course, you had to also buy special batteries designed to be recharged, but they would last a long time, and you could then have batteries always at the ready for your flashlights, cheap wall clocks, and numerous other household small gadgets.

The chargers were imperfect to being with: they didn’t always fully charge the batteries on the first try; sometimes you had to jiggle the batteries in their cradles to get them to keep charging up to “full”. Also, one HAD to charge all sizes of batteries in pairs. I don’t know about you, but the preponderance of flashlights in our household that require THREE AAA batteries makes this a frustrating limitation.

In my entirely unscientific opinion, the whole rechargeable battery scheme was a product designed to fail. The batteries recharged all right, but with each successive charging, they didn’t seem to last as long as the previous time, and the charging took longer. Also, charging them up too far in advance of when you needed them meant the charge would run down in the interim.

The company that manufactured Ray-o-Vac batteries was bought by the company that made Energizer batteries in 2018. Mysteriously, rechargeable batteries began to disappear from store shelves shortly thereafter. No doubt consumer surveys bore out their self-serving boardroom assessments that the public was dissatisfied with rechargables. Truth certainly seems to be that if rechargeable batteries were any good, the public would buy fewer batteries, eating into their profits. It’s pretty clear to see why a company might want to deliberately undermine such a product. Technically still available, they are very difficult to find at all in stores I frequent.

So when the dwindling stock of my rechargeable batteries finally stop holding a charge, it will be another bitter loss for consumers. It will also be an equally bitter loss for anyone with concerns about the toxic chemicals we keep dumping into our environment like we have another perfectly good planet to go to once we make this one so polluted as to be unlivable. Yay, Capitalism!