The world uses 4,000,000,000 AA batteries per year — enough to power Finland for seven weeks or Houston for 20 minutes in July. Another few hundred million go AWOL as junk drawer flotsam, under car seats and in Labradors. Many escape while consumers try to chew open their bomb-proof sealed packs.
Oddly, while global AA battery consumption has been widely publicized, with it being a suspiciously round number, AAA battery sales are obscure. This can only mean a heinous plot by Big Deep Battery, a right- or left-wing (depending on polarity) conspiracy.
Battery Bias
AAAs exist for remote controls, particularly those with more buttons than the left end of an accordion. Helpful hieroglyphics near the battery compartment demonstrate proper insertion but have shrunk to illegibility along with the batteries. Batteries usually fail in the dark, which adds to the challenge. Devices using a three-cell cartridge, already disturbing in its lack of symmetry, are correctly refilled much less often than probability would predict. Worst of all, a dead cell is identical to the new one you just laid it next to.
Regardless, the consumption of these smaller batteries is growing, as devices using such power sources become more efficient. The advent of the LED, for instance, was the death blow to the venerable D battery, along with its lame little brother, the C cell. This transition also changed public perception of cordless devices to things that might actually work when needed, unlike the D-cell corrosion chambers we called flashlights back in the day. Those were truly the Dark Ages as numerous flashlights were frantically located, whacked on kitchen counters to encourage illumination, and battery-swapped in the dark as water filled the basement during a power outage.
Depending on those older batteries during an emergency was a fatal error, as often demonstrated by horror movies where an attractive female character blithely relied on a two-cell flickering torch as she inexplicably chose to investigate a noise in the attic, often bizarrely clad in sleepwear, despite movie audiences shouting, “Don’t go in the attic!” D cells were destined to fail fitfully before they should but could nail the timing. Heroines today use a flashlight app, which helps locate the phone when dropped in an inaccessible location.
New technology has erased old dreary expectations, so now AA and AAA batteries are a default item on practically every shopping app. Just don’t look at the price. Above all — this happened to a guy I know — never buy batteries at an airport. They are pricier than booze, and you don’t get double for a dollar more.
