URJAR
UrJar reuses discarded laptop battery packs to power LED lights in poor sections of India.
Forty percent of the world’s population, including a significant portion of the rural and urban poor sections of the population in India, does not have access to reliable electricity supply. Concurrently, there is rapid penetration of battery-operated portable computing devices such as laptops, both in the developing and developed world. This generates a significant amount of electronic waste (e-waste), especially in the form of discarded Lithium Ion batteries which power such devices. Around 50 million laptop and desktop computers are discarded in the US every year, and at least 70 percent of these discarded batteries contain enough life left to power an LED light at least 4 hours a day for a year. UrJar is a device which uses re-usable Lithium Ion cells from discarded laptop battery packs to power low energy DC devices. It has the potential to channel e-waste towards the alleviation of energy poverty, thus simultaneously providing a sustainable solution for both problems.