Comment by hn_acc1

It's gotten worse over the course of my life, IMHO. Costco's Kirkland batteries 15 years ago rarely leaked - now they do it in months sometimes. We had leakage a bit back when I was a kid (80s) but I honestly don't remember it happening as often.

It's one of the things that pushed me all-in on Eneloop. We were throwing away 10-20 AAs/month at one point (wife likes electric candles). Recently, it's been 2 or 4 as we discover old remotes or something we hadn't replaced yet. And we have 8-20 AAs and 2-4 AAAs charged and ready to go at any point. Swap, and put the empty ones in the charger is now the standard process at our house.