Hybrid cars fuel economy is one of the biggest reasons people decide to buy them. As more and more people try to get away from unsustainable resources like oil and fossil fuels the industry has exploded in recent years. It was estimated a little over 2 million hybrid vehicles were sold in the U.S. in 2012 alone, according to Statistic Brain. Of that number 209,216 were Honda Civic Hybrid models.

While those are one of the most popular, that’s not the model hybrid car batteries were taken from for an initiative in Yellowstone National Park. According to the environmental news source Earth911.com Toyota recently formed a relationship with the national park to provide hybrid car batteries from their Camry models.

It all started when the ranger station at Lamar Buffalo Ranch, which is located deep inside Yellowstone National Park, needed to find a new way to supply its power. For years it had used the same old generator that was not only noisy, but inefficient. That’s when someone came up with the idea to use solar panels to collect sustainable and much cheaper energy. The onyl problem was they needed a source to power the panels. That’s when Toyota agreed to send 208 old hybrid car batteries to the park to power the panels.

They were all batteries that had run out of the appropriate power to run a car on their own, but they still had enough juice in them to be used in some capacity. It was a win-win situation for a company trying to find a way to get rid of equipment that wasn’t being used in a non-wasteful way and support the efforts of a good cause. A new hybrid battery for a car will usually cost between $3,000 and $4,000 in the United States.

The solar panel/battery pack system produces almost 68,000 KwH of power each year, enough to power six average American households a year and more than enough to meet the ranger station’s needs. Thanks to Toyota the world is becoming a more environmentally friendly place 208 used car batteries at a time.