The Pipetting Pigeon Connects Donated Lab Supplies to Labs that Need Them

Nicole Kelesoglu December 16, 2024

What would you do after retiring from a life long career in a field you loved? In April Blodgett’s case, she saw a way to give back by enabling science education and new avenues of research with her volunteer work as the “Pipetting Pigeon”.

Labconscious thanks April for the following interview and her sizable positive contribution to cost savings and waste diversion for life science! We hope her story will inspire biologists to find similar opportunities to conserve scientific resources.

The First PLA Plastic Plates Offered for Tissue Culture

Nicole Kelesoglu February 13, 2024

It’s always exciting when a maverick hits the mark. The first polylactic acid (PLA) Petri dish product is a one-to-one replacement for labs using fossil fuel-based plastic plates for cell culture. The maker, a small privately owned company called Diversified Biotech, Inc., collaborated with researchers from Brandeis University to develop it. Fostering eco-justice with a simple swap sounds good, but could this specialized PLA material even improve cell culture?

Q and A with Polycarbin - The Closed-Loop Lab Plastic system sweeping Life science

Nicole Kelesoglu June 22, 2023

If one sustainability conundrum vexes biologists, it is the environmental consequences of single-use lab plastic waste generated by laboratory work. In this conversation with Noah Pyles, we hear what sets Polycarbin apart from typical lab plastic recycling, how their system works, and why it matters…

Lab equipment that isn't lab equipment

Nicole Kelesoglu September 28, 2021

A few years back, the hilarious Science Twitter conversation #reviewforscience made it into the news. A recent Science Twitter thread shows how this creative mindset persists - only the focus moved to lab bench work.

Strategies for lab plastic shortages

Nicole Kelesoglu March 18, 2021

Ironically, after many years of concern about how to reduce single-use lab plastic usage and divert this waste from landfills - we now face shortages. This post explores current events and ways that life science labs are dealing with pipette tips, plates, and tube shortages, as well as a few high-tech options to conserve these resources and improve the reliability of assay results.

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Add operational resilience to the life sciences by targeting cold shipping waste

Nicole Kelesoglu April 27, 2020

The concept of ‘operational resilience’ factors in the ways to keep working in changing conditions. As a biologist, you might think of it as applying the principle of adaptation to your lab work. Today’s blog shares simple and effective ways that you can add resiliency to cold shipping biologicals.

Tackling Waste: 5 Steps to Less Plastic Waste in the Lab

Dr. Kerstin Hermuth-Kleinschmidt September 9, 2019

Life sciences laboratories are another area in which plastic waste can be reduced. Approximately 5.5 million tons of plastic waste are produced every year in life sciences laboratories alone, including items like pipette tips, nitrile gloves and cell culture flasks. In the age of global waste pollution and the ubiquity of plastic in the world around us, this is definitely too much. It can’t all be changed, but improvements are possible in some areas.

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Using Rheaply to beat the odds against sharing lab supplies and scientific equipment

Nicole Kelesoglu March 25, 2019

Northwestern University has an ace in the hole when it comes to making good use of lab surplus. Labs at the world-renowned Fineberg Shool of Medicine are now connected via a cloud-based resource-sharing technology, called Rheaply. Rheaply combines the ease of use of social media ease with the marketplace functionality of an ebay. No barcode labels necessary!

The Pipetting Pigeon Connects Donated Lab Supplies to Labs that Need Them

The First PLA Plastic Plates Offered for Tissue Culture

Q and A with Polycarbin - The Closed-Loop Lab Plastic system sweeping Life science

Lab equipment that isn't lab equipment

Strategies for lab plastic shortages

Add operational resilience to the life sciences by targeting cold shipping waste

Tackling Waste: 5 Steps to Less Plastic Waste in the Lab

Using Rheaply to beat the odds against sharing lab supplies and scientific equipment

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