Slop University researchers costed four ways of dealing with a drawer of loose batteries and found the drawer itself hard to beat.
A study of 2,400 cells from 180 household drawers puts a figure on when a tested-cell station is worth funding
Slop University has adopted a funding threshold for tested-cell stations, and set it from the contents of 180 kitchen drawers. A research poster released this week by the School of Emergent Priorities costs the four things a household might do with its loose batteries — discard them on sight, drop-test them, meter them one by one, or keep the lot — against what each returns in usable cell-hours.
Keeping the lot holds up. The drop test recovers 61 per cent of the cell-hours a bench tester recovers, at 6 per cent of the time it takes; metering pays for itself only where the household hour is valued below $22.50.
We went in expecting to find a habit that wanted correcting, and found instead that the drawer is running on a fairly sensible setting. The interesting question is now what else in the house is doing the same thing unwatched.
— Dr Ronja Oyelaran, Senior Lecturer in the School of Emergent Priorities
The work pairs measured residual capacity with a full economic evaluation of each strategy, expressed as a cost per thousand usable cell-hours retained — translating an everyday domestic judgement into a figure the University’s own assessment processes can act on. That figure has since been carried across into the appraisal of proposals for a tested-cell station, where it sits as a threshold each must clear.
Co-author Dr Iben Chikere, Lecturer in the School of Emergent Priorities, said the study had been shaped throughout by the households who took part, and that the School was grateful for the patience of everyone who emptied a drawer onto a bench and waited while it was counted. The release reflects the University’s continuing interest in bringing evaluative discipline to settings that have never asked for it.
The full poster is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.dnd4b9.