Batteries hold a special place in our society. They are hard to recycle, pose a huge environmental risk after they are thrown away, are the result of massive environmental damage in order to source the materials for their construction, and are a common choking hazard. Unfortunately, it is hard to use many of the necessary and important devices we use every day without batteries. Since we are often forced to use batteries, which ones should we buy?

Our Recommendation Parameters

We consulted a few reputable publications on the environmental impact of each battery brand, its effective lifespan, reliability, and more. The batteries on this list scored the best out of all brands (which isn’t saying much, since all brands scored pretty low, these are the best of the worst, in other words).

Top Battery Recommendations

If you don’t have the time budget or ability to shop between different battery brands, you can at least keep one thing in mind: always default for rechargeable batteries. Rechargeable batteries will save you lots of money, reduce pollution, and support more sustainable technology.

#8 Energizer Rechargeable Batteries [R]

• Ethical Consumer rating: 20

Energizer (NYSE:ENR) scores at or near the top when it comes to life and reliability. If you want one of the best-performing batteries but also minimize your environmental impact, you can do much worse than these rechargeable batteries.

#7 Panasonic Batteries

• Ethical Consumer rating: 23

There’s a wide variety of batteries available from Panasonic, so if you have specific battery needs, chances are Panasonic has what you need, including rechargeable and alternate sizes.

#6 Eneloop Batteries

• Ethical Consumer rating: 23

Eneloop also performs well when it comes to life and reliability. These are also made by the Panasonic company, but are sometimes branded by themselves, and since they outperform their peers on a regular basis, they deserve their own spot on this list.

#5 Varta Batteries

• Ethical Consumer rating: 35

Varta is a German battery company, so if you’re looking for a reliable battery, you can’t go wrong with German engineering. Varta appears twice on this list, this spot is reserved for their standard batteries.

#4 Philips Batteries

• Ethical Consumer rating: 35

Phillips (NYSE:PHG) is the only battery brand to receive the top rating for Conflict Minerals and also has a high score for reporting their carbon footprint. They were given an average rating for reporting their environmental impact. While their batteries aren’t necessarily less polluting than others (they have no recycled content, etc.) at least they are transparent about it and report their data regularly.

#3 GP batteries

• Ethical Consumer rating: 35

GP Batteries is another brand that appears on this list twice, and with the other GP brand being at the top spot, it should tell you that GP is doing something right, or at least doing less wrong than other batteries.

#2 Varta Recharge ACCU Recycled batteries

• Ethical Consumer rating: 38

Varta’s Recharge Accu Recycled batteries have the most amount of recycled materials than any other battery brand. It also the only brand on the list to be awarded the award for best Tax Conduct.

#1 GP Recyko rechargeable batteries

• Ethical Consumer rating: 38

This top brand of battery has an average score for Conflict Minerals and an average score for Environmental Reporting. All the Recyko brand batteries are made with recycled content and all the packaging is plastic-free. These rechargeable batteries can be recharged up to 1,500 times.

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