Let us premise the conversation by saying recharge wild rift Batteries are always nice, because they help save the environment, allow us to reuse what we already have, and reduce waste.
Anyone who has heard about or been to the Burning Man Festival, knows that there is a simple balance between the planet and personal enlightenment. Personal enlightenment can come from a number of things while in the Black Rock Desert; associating oneself around the Burning Man community, creating a gorgeous art exhibit for everyone to see, or making your costume light up like its Christmas.
The Burning Man Festival is the largest pack-in pack-out society on the planet. They believe in leaving everything how you found it. If you bring a bag of trash to the event, plan on leaving with a bag of trash, it’s that simple. There are no receptacles, no currency, and thousands of people with the same belief. Helping out the environment is am much a part of Burning Man as each individual participant.
So why am I talking so much about Burning Man? Burning Man has given our society fascinating goals to live by, as well as how we can do our part in everyday life to help better ourselves and the environment. EL Wire is a great new technology that is essentially a copper wire wrapped in a colored plastic tube that lights up in a number of beautiful colors when a charge is applied. Its lifespan is similar to LED Lights, but has different and unique characteristics. EL Wire glows in a 360 degree fashion, glowing from all sides of the wire.
Electroluminescent (EL) Wire has an operating voltage that is so low, you can power a whole costume, or room of light on simple household batteries. This brings up why rechargeable batteries are recommended. Say for instance you have an EL Wire costume that takes 4 AA batteries. Over the life of that costume, you will end up using over 1,600 AA batteries. This assumes you have a lifespan of 5,000 hours, and you have to replace the batteries every 12 hours. In reality, most EL Wire will last longer than 5,000 hours, which can increase your battery usage even more.
Rechargeable batteries have become the social norm, and are so readily available they can be picked up at most grocery or electronic stores. And for about a buck a piece, you can have the same 4 batteries over the entire lifecycle of the costume or wire. The one downside of Rechargeable batteries are that typically they do not last as long as standard fresh non-rechargeable batteries. Rechargeable’s tend to have a charge cycle of about 90-95% of non-rechargeable batteries their first year, 80% their second year of use, 70% their third year, and so on. What does that mean? Say you have a battery that lasts 10 hours with disposable batteries, you can expect an eco-friendly option to last about 9-9.5 hours of the same continuous use.
If you are not certain that rechargeable batteries are highly recommend to be used with EL Wire, let me tell you where using disposable batteries come out on top… Your wallet. If you ended up buying even 500 batteries over the life of your one EL Wire project, you can expect to pay over $150 on disposable batteries, that is if you are buying Costco batteries. If you go for the name brand batteries each time, plan on that number more than doubling.
A great set of rechargeable batteries with a charger will set you back about $30-40. That cost savings may not seem like a big deal, but think about all the thousands of disposable batteries each year that are wasted, and costing all of us money, and our landfills. Consider adding a small solar charger and recharge your batteries for free with the power of the sun. These solar chargers have become so cheap and efficient, you can recharge your whole battery set in just a couple of hours with the sun’s rays.
Rechargeable batteries help in a number of ways, but especially helping us reduce the number of trash bags we fill with batteries. Help the Burning Man community and the world out by using rechargeables and save some money while you are at it!
