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As others have pointed out, this is a battery-powered lamp which needs salt water as its electrolyte, but gets its power from a separate consumable. There's not
by jimrandomh 12y ago
As others have pointed out, this is a battery-powered lamp which needs salt water as its electrolyte, but gets its power from a separate consumable. There's nothing wrong with that per se, but the way they work so hard to distract attention away from the battery is pretty scummy. Flagged, and I encourage others to do the same.
- lisper 12y agoThey state in the first paragraph of explanatory text, "Replace consumable every 6 months!" No, they don't emphasize this, but they don't hide it either. I think flagging this is a bit harsh.
- jerf 12y agoI'm going with flagging it, because the salt water is an irrelevant, uninteresting side show. Compared to the cost of the anode and cathode material in the first place, the salt water is free, so the question is "why are they even making you put it in?" to which I can only answer "deception". No, seriously, I took a moment to try to come up with an explanation that didn't involve that, but given the physics here I can't. Pitching this as either "sustainable" or "cheap for the developing world" is a lie, or some sort of collective ignorance (where no one person involved quite understands what is going on) that amounts to much the same thing.
- VLM 12y agowikipedia is a little wishy washy about "may leak". Much more realistic to write "will leak". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinc%E2%80%93carbon_battery#Leakage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinc%E2%80%93carbon_battery#Lea... Kept dry, it should store infinitely? The greenwashing and poverty-washing or whatever is pretty awful. But an eternally storable battery is kinda interesting.