What is it that makes your house a home? If you are like most people, it's not just one thing. It is a lot of little things that add up to make where you live a special environment in which you feel safe and comfortable. The concept of a lot of little things adding up is consistent across all of life. It even applies to building a more sustainable world.

You might look at replacing your disposable batteries with USB rechargeable batteries from Paleblue Earth as contributing very little to the grand scheme of things. We agree, to a point. If the only means of achieving sustainability were buying our batteries, sustainability would be a fleeting dream at best. But it is not the only means. It is just one of many small things that can add up over time.

Sustainability Is a Lifestyle

From our perspective, individual consumers can look at sustainability in one of two ways. It can be an ideological movement measured by the number of people who adopt sustainable practices. Or it can be a lifestyle adopted by people want to live in a different kind of world. We prefer the latter. Why? Because when sustainability is a lifestyle, people are more likely to think about things like not throwing disposable batteries in a landfill and progress in inevitable.

There are many definitions of sustainability. As a general rule though, they all have a basic principle in common: the idea of integrating cohesive policies across all areas of life to create a world that will thrive for future generations. If you need a simple definition, sustainability is the opposite of disposability.

We make it too easy these days to throw things away. Indeed, the price of consumer goods is so cheap that people think nothing of throwing away a broken object that their grandparents would have repaired and put back into service. Too many of us think too little of throwing away things that could easily be repurposed or recycled.

When it comes to things like batteries, we allow ourselves to be fooled by cash register pricing. People buy alkaline batteries instead of rechargeable lithium-ion cells because their price at the cash register is cheaper. But it is an illusion. Over the long-term (even, perhaps, the short or medium-term), rechargeable li-ion batteries are cheaper.

Doing Our Small Part

If sustainability is truly about doing a lot of little things that add up, the only way for it to work is for everyone to do their part. That includes companies like ours. We are doing our part by making affordable lithium-ion batteries that offer the convenience of USB recharging.

Keep in mind that each of our batteries can be recharged 1,000 times or more. For every one PBE battery you purchase, you are keeping 999 alkaline batteries out of your local landfill. You are also reducing the need for the battery manufacturers to continue making, shipping, storing and fulfilling so many cells. If everyone who uses consumer batteries would make the switch to lithium-ion, the difference would be dramatic. 85% of the market is still using single use batteries, likely due to conventional rechargeables not meeting user-needs in terms of convenience and reliability.

Investing in USB rechargeable batteries to replace disposable alkalines constitutes just one action in a much broader strategy of sustainability. It could be an easy first step in adopting a sustainable lifestyle for anyone who has decided to give it a try.

We are smart enough to know that PBE batteries will not save the world on their own. But encouraging people to replace their disposable batteries with our rechargeable cells is one of the things we can do to help. If everyone just does what then can, they will eventually add up to reaching our bigger and broader sustainability goals.