No, they are better for the environment where their use is possible, as they have many charging cycles before they need replacement. This compares to single use alkaline batteries which can’t be recharged or reused. They are only worse if one doesn’t recharge them, and uses them as a single use battery.
They are readily recyclable. They can be placed in battery recycling bins which can be found close by. For nearest locations, see
Brendan
Paying attention to the unit price of grocer products can greatly help people during this cost of living crisis. So i thought I’d remind people of this by sharing the following current example of how unit prices can vary greatly within and between retailers . It relates to brussels sprouts. OK I know they are not everyone’s favourite green veggie, but we love them and buy them every week when they are available.
At Coles a 400g pack cost $17.25 per 100g, 74% more than when sold loose for $9.90 per kg. A pic of them is below . At Aldi a 500g pack cost $10 per kg. I could not see any loose ones there.
Spotted recently … the mass on the shelf ticket was incorrect, and hence the unit price, although correctly calculated, was also incorrect.
“UP Vigilante” whipped out pen and phone (calculator) and fixed it up. 
At aldi onions are cheaper by the pre pack netted bag but loose, are dearer. I prefer loose buying. I suppose many other things are the same.
Yes of course. The point I am making is that many, if not most, AA batteries are used in devices which do NOT cut off before the batteries go flat. When this happens the battery can be ruined, or soon will be. So you do not get the multiple uses you wanted. Thus there is no saving in resources or dollars because they are a lot more expensive than alkalines and use more environmentally problematical substances.
No, they are worse when allowed to discharge too far and fail, either immediately or after a few uses. This occurs all the time in the many devices that do not have low voltage cutoff circuitry. Most toys, old style torches including cheap LED torches, clocks, remotes etc. The problem was worse with NiCads and old style NiMHs because they have high self-discharge and would go flat quickly even when not in use.
Rechargeables are environmentally and financially advantageous only when you get many re-uses. As above, many devices do not allow this in practice, so if your device does not have lo-voltage cutout, you are better off with single-use alkalines.
I’m not seeing that in practice. I have zillions of devices using removable rechargeable batteries, many older, some even with NiMH batteries (I think the last of the NiCds have been retired). They all regularly go flat. If I were getting only one use or a few uses of the batteries, I would have noticed very soon because I would be buying new batteries all the time - and I am not.
However this may have digressed from unit pricing!
As I said, it depends whether the device declared the battery flat, or the battery was actually flat. It also depends on how long the battery is left flat, and whether there is one battery or a more than one in series. I’m glad you have no problem.
I find it infuriating when supermarkets use unit pricing but not the same units. This photo shows one example of so many: I challenge anyone to compare prices across these products. Some are priced per 10g and some per 100g (and there’s possibly other variations in there as well). How is anyone meant to figure that out?
You can move a decimal point one way or the other to multiply or divide by ten. So $104 per 100 g is the same as $10.4 per 10 g.
Thanks, yes, I’m aware of that.
Possibly something for Choice to take up with the government.
I don’t know what the legal requirements are at the moment but obviously, in the extreme, unit pricing could be rendered completely unviable if a given supermarket chooses a different unit mass for each product, never mind about choosing a unit volume for some other comparable products.
