From cell phones to digital cameras, the convenience of a cordless life has come with a curse: billions of used rechargeable batteries.

The battery manufacturing industry estimates the average American owns six cordless devices, most of which have batteries that can be recharged up to 1,000 times before they die.

When that happens, 61 percent of consumers either stash their batteries somewhere in their home or throw them away.

But there's an eco-friendly alternative.

The Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corp., an Atlanta-based nonprofit organization sponsored by the industry, maintains collection boxes at 50,000 locations nationwide, including 22 locations at Home Depot and Radio Shack stores in Hawai'i. The mission is simple: raise awareness among consumers whose use of rechargeable batteries is growing faster every day.

"You probably upgrade your cell phone before the battery dies," said Theresa Hall, a spokeswoman for the recycling organization. "You don't go through rechargeable batteries faster than you do aluminum cans. People don't think about it until the battery dies."

REDUCING AND REUSING

The organization has collected 42 million pounds of rechargeable batteries since 1996, the year Congress mandated that nickel-cadmium batteries be disposed of in a safe manner. Nickel-cadmium batteries dominated the market at the time, but cadmium is a toxic heavy metal that causes substantial pollution when it's put in a landfill or incinerated.

"When we started we wanted nickel-cadmium out of the landfill," Hall said. "Now you will only find it in some power tools and cordless phones."

The batteries that replaced nickel-cadmium in many cordless devices are not harmful to the environment — according to the federal Environmental Protection Agency — but the battery recycling effort expanded to include them anyway, Hall said.

"With the rechargeable batteries, they can be melted down and the metal used again," she said. "Anything you can plug into the wall to recharge the battery, we can recycle."

Everything is processed on the Mainland. The nickel and the iron are extracted and used in stainless-steel production. The cadmium is melted and extracted for re-use in new nickel-cadmium batteries.

EDUCATING THE PUBLIC

In Honolulu, the city encourages citizens to recycle their batteries at the Home Depot or Radio Shack locations instead of trashing them, but there is no law requiring people to do so because it would be impossible to enforce, said Markus Owens, a spokesman for the city's Department of Environmental Services, which oversees refuse collection and recycling.

"Nobody is sitting there going through each bag of trash to see if there is a battery there," he said. "We can restrict what goes into the landfill. However, it is unenforceable."

But the Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corp.'s program has been well-received at Hawai'i's Home Depot stores, said Jennifer Ewert, the company's environmental specialist.

More than 17,109 pounds of rechargeable batteries have been collected in Hawai'i since 2002, Ewert said. Shipments go out several times a month.

"The majority of what stores receive for recycling are rechargeable batteries for power tools, but the RBRC program also accepts cell phones as well; and we do see a few of those in our waste stream," Ewert said.

Even so, public understanding of the need for this remains limited, Ewert said.

"I guess most people don't know, as far as being green goes, just what a rechargeable battery can do when you put it in a landfill," she said. "I think it is more the conscious consumer knowing they should properly dispose of it."