Towards a Disposal Criterion for the Battery Drawer

An incremental cost-effectiveness analysis of pre-disposal testing across 2,400 loose cells from 180 households

A research poster from the School of Emergent Priorities recovers 2,400 loose cells from 180 household drawers, measures the residual capacity of each under constant-current discharge, and costs four disposal strategies --- discard on sight, the drop test, a bench tester, and retaining everything --- as a full economic evaluation expressed in dollars per 1,000 usable cell-hours retained. Retain-all is not dominated: the drop test recovers 61 per cent of the cell-hours the bench tester recovers at 6 per cent of its time cost, and test-then-discard clears the adopted threshold only where the household hour is valued below $22.50. The poster reads the drawer as a defensible allocation rather than a lapse in diligence, and records the $840 per 1,000 cell-hours figure as the threshold against which proposals for a tested-cell station are now assessed.

@misc{slop_dnd4b9,
  author       = {Ronja Oyelaran and Iben Chikere and Verity Marris},
  title        = {Towards a Disposal Criterion for the Battery Drawer: An incremental cost-effectiveness analysis of pre-disposal testing across 2,400 loose cells from 180 households},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.dnd4b9},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-poster-cost-every-strategy-dnd4b9/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research poster},
}