At any given point in time, more than 400 million people are without or use some form of “off-grid” power. Luckily, research from IBM shows that nearly 70% of all discarded batteries could be used to power an LED light bulb for 4+ hours for an entire year. This researches backs up earlier claims and tests hosted in India in order to combat not only the power problem, but also the ever increasing e-waste problem in the area.
The research team also mounted efforts in an attempt to create a way to use this leftover battery power. They successfully created an “Urjar”, a device which uses the lithium-ion cells from the battery to power LED lights and other small electrical appliances. Thinking broadly, the device is essentially meant to knock out two bird with one stone; the problem of mounting e-waste and the problem of energy accessibility. While testing the device in the Indian city of Bangalore, the only major critique of the Urjar was the fact that rats often chewed through the wires. This is an easy fix, however, and adding rat resistant wiring to the device would not increase the set price, around $10, by too much.
While at the moment the main problem the Urjar is solving is the issue of energy accessibility, looking into the next 10 years the primary function may be to alleviate e-waste. As most of the electronic waste of the developed world is pushed into the developing world; countries like India, which also have a growing e-waste problem of their own, are being hit especially hard by the crisis.
While this research sounds like it could solve a lot of problems, the question becomes whether or not it will be applied and distributed of not. The problems between research and application often differ; especially in cases that require a lot of people to do one thing. If the Urjar catches on and becomes widely used, it won’t be the cure to all problems energy. It will be a step in the right direction, however, and will without a doubt draw more attention to the problem of energy and energy waste. Here in the United States we often forget that billions of people exist beyond our boundaries, so hearing things like this that help draw attention to those people is always welcomed. I could go on some tangent about how the world would be better if everyone opened their eyes a little bit, but that sounds like a lot of work and not at all related to the topic.
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