Hanging onto the old phone

We have a cordless phone which is about five years old. Over the past ten months it has received one hell of a bashing with the long phone calls between Teenage Daughter and The Boyfriend. Each handset was needing to be recharged sooner and sooner. Sometimes one would simply die without any warning.

After the air-conditioner incident, I thought the best starting point would be to clean the charging units and see what happened. Absolutely nothing. Next step was to replace the batteries. I decided the most sensible thing to do would be to only replace the battery on one of the handsets, just in case that wasn't the problem.

When I got to the store I had a lovely chat with the sales assistant who pointed out that, for just a little more, I could just replace the phone. That is true, I could have. However, I didn't. The battery has made a huge difference to the handset and I now intend to buy one for the second handset. At this point I need to consider the fact that battery disposal is environmentally unfriendly and that some poor person with very few rights put together the battery :( What I don't have to consider is disposing of an old phone and its batteries or the treatment of the workers in the phone manufacturing and components factories.

Replacing the batteries is the lesser of the two evils. The best case scenario would be to use a phone with a cord. We have one but it's in a family area and Teenage Daughter needs privacy when talking to The Boyfriend. (Read that as I don't want to listen to them express how much they love each other. Eeeww.)

Cheers.