You know what is far more eco-friendly than not having to replace batteries on keyboards, mice and touchpads?<p>Cables.<p>Lithium-ion batteries are not necessarily clean to manufacture.  And, eventually these things are going to end-up in a landfill somewhere.<p>I truly don&#x27;t understand this push to de-cable keyboards, mice and touchpads that will be attached to something on your desk.  Every single one of our workstations, Mac or PC, has cabled keyboards and trackballs.  I can&#x27;t remember one single instance --in decades and hundreds of workstations-- of anyone, including myself, expressing any degree of inconvenience or any problem whatsoever related to cabled input devices.<p>The way I see it, adding batteries --of any kind-- to a device that could very reasonably be plugged in and forgotten about is the exact opposite of eco friendly.<p>The funny part you still have to have cables laying around because there will be a monthly two hour charging ritual --times N devices.  At least with disposable batteries one could pop in new batteries and get going.  Now, if you forget to charge, you&#x27;ll have to attach the cable for a couple of hours.  My guess is eventually people are going to leave the keyboard and touchpad plugged-in, again negating the reasoning for both non-eco-friendly lithium-ion batteries and wireless.<p>This is a design choice made purely for design and presented with a very twisted justification of eco-friendliness when, in reality, the opposite is true.  Outside of a few corner cases cabled devices would do just as well and be far more eco-friendly by a long shot.<p>There are many articles out there on the issues surrounding the production of lithium-ion chemistry cells.  Of course, as with anything on the web, it is important to understand the interests and bias behind who publishes the article and why.  With that, I grabbed a couple to post the links here.  I leave it to the reader to explore further.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;phys.org&#x2F;news&#x2F;2014-10-li-ion-batteries-toxic-halogens-environmentally.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;phys.org&#x2F;news&#x2F;2014-10-li-ion-batteries-toxic-halogens...</a><p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fool.com&#x2F;investing&#x2F;general&#x2F;2014&#x2F;01&#x2F;19&#x2F;tesla-motors-dirty-little-secret-is-a-major-proble.aspx" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fool.com&#x2F;investing&#x2F;general&#x2F;2014&#x2F;01&#x2F;19&#x2F;tesla-motor...</a>