The price I quoted was high anyway. They are closer to $2K. Too cheap means more environmental impact.
That's why I said that Toyota pays a bounty for them. They buy back even the dead ones. There is a sticker on every battery that says you can take it to any Toyota dealer for a $150.00 reward (source). You will not find many in the scrapyard. I don't know where the battery is but I will look for the sticker and try to verify this myself. In Oregon you hardly see any beverage bottles in the trash because of only a $.05 bounty. Also the warranty is 100K miles but the Prius is used by a lot of taxi companies and municipalities. Many of them have over 300,000 miles on the original battery. Of all the Prius' sold since 2000, 97% on the road. (source)
Yes the battery is nasty stuff but it is just a NiCad. If you stuck all the cell phone batteries in a pile and all the Prius batteries in a pile I don't know which would be higher. Not that any of this means they don't have an impact. Maybe it is a step in the right direction but maybe not. The best way would be hydrogen fuel cells but they are not there yet. But at least things other than fossil fuel are being experimented with.