Batteries vs. Brightness

Advice on low waste ways to keep your headlamp charged

Welcome back to Between A Mossy Rock And A Hard Place, the fortnightly advice column for all your outdoorsy conundrums!

Thanks to Too Many Batteries!! for submitting this week’s question:

What’s the trick to keeping a headlamp charged without creating a trash heap of partially used batteries? My headlamp dims when the batteries get low, so I started putting in fresh ones before every backpacking trip for max brightness. Problem is I don’t have any use for the old ones that still have some juice left. I want to be less wasteful without sacrificing light.

I’m glad to know I’m not the only one with a desk drawer that rattles with old batteries every time it opens! And I know the pain of spending the night before a trip sorting through partially used batteries to figure out which combination gives off the brightest light, only for my headlamp to dim dramatically over the course of the first evening at camp. It’s no surprise that you’d want to cover your bases by putting fresh batteries in before you head on trail!

My tipping point happened last spring—it was the sticker shock of battery prices at my local CVS that made me dive into alternative options for keeping my headlamp bright. Luckily, there are two easy options that will lower your waste (and maybe even the base weight¹ of your pack).