Sure, more and more electronics have built-in batteries, charged with a multitude of chargers with distinct prongs, so that most of us now have a collection of tangled charger wires laying around at any available outlet. It seems that for the most part, no two chargers are alike.

But we still use plenty of devices that still utilize conventional batteries. These include: remote controls, flashlights, children’s toys, and some of us are still hanging onto portable CD players (myself included). What do you do with your batteries once they have been used?

If you’re like most people, you are tossing those acid-filled tubes into a garbage can, to eventually leak and wreak havoc on the soil and maybe ground water of the area in which it is dumped. The cumulative affect of many thousands or millions of batteries can be devastating.

The “Saved” Series will include items saved from being discarded in some manner, items doomed to be put into a landfill or closeted away from use. Instead of the potential user of these products buying new, we will show how these products, still with much utility left, are being used to improve one’s envirohuman impact.

By using a product that was left for “waste,” again, either by cleaning or fixing, one can usually help to reduce the amount of waste that goes into landfills (and other waste streams) as well as help to reduce the demand for new manufactured products.

Certainly, you could reuse just about any of the grocery bags that make it to your home still in one piece. But usually they do make it without breaking, because it’s common practice to put heavier loads into a double paper or plastic bag.

The amount of waste generated by grocery bags is avoidable by recycling them, either through a recycling center, or replacing your own packaging paper use, for example, with grocery bags. So at one time, I cut open paper grocery sacks to use the paper to package books I had sold on Amazon.com.

When I ceased my selling activity, I decided to change my habits in order to stop accumulating paper bags. (In retrospect, the paper is thicker than other packaging options, like recycled plastic envelopes, which would save slight amounts of shipping costs for me, as well as fuel savings for less weight shipped).

I have purchased a few reusable plastic grocery bags, shaped the same way as a typical paper bag, but they can be reused over and over, saving the stores from using paper or plastic bags for my use every time I go — I bring my own — saving the environment from having to endure the waste and recycling centers from having more to process (they have enough in newspapers).