Rheaply officially launched at the University of Chicago on August 21st, with a launch party where faculty and students were invited to a free lunch n’ learn to learn about how to make the most use out of Rheaply’s resource exchange platform. Rheaply is actively working with the university’s Office of Shared Research Facilities (OSRF) to facilitate better resource management across the university, so that those in need of resources can source from those that have it first — before a purchasing decision is made.
From September 9th to 11th, Rheaply was invited to the UChicago Endocrinology lab at the Knapp Center for Biodiscovery, to help the faculty and students facilitate the lab’s clean-out process after its decommissioning.
The Rheaply Concierge team, with the help of students and faculty from the lab, spent 3 days documenting the lab’s assets and making the items available virtually to students and researchers from other departments within the university.
At the end of the 3 days, $300,000 worth of research assets were diverted from the landfill via Rheaply’s digital platform, and it’s projected another $400,000 worth of items were picked up while researchers claimed their items.
The idea behind Rheaply’s asset exchange platform was conceived in the university research setting, where waste and resource mismanagement is becoming an issue of concern that is hard to comprehend and quantify. It’s estimated that plastics alone account for 5.5 million tons of waste in a research setting.
Rheaply’s technology aims to solve this problem and prevent valuable assets from going to waste, thereby contributing to the zero-waste circular economy framework.
Rheaply’s technology aims to solve this problem and prevent valuable assets from going to waste, thereby contributing to the zero-waste circular economy framework.
Events such as this lab clean-out foster collaboration across the university by connecting faculty and students from various disciplines and departments.
Not only do these events bring together current Rheaply users at the university, they also help Rheaply capture new users at the institution, who might decide to request an item or make an offer on an item on the Rheaply platform after the event for their own research needs.
Researchers and faculty members at UChicago were extremely grateful for Rheaply’s help in creating an efficient lab clean-out process, as well as for finding new homes for their valuable research assets. Rheaply is excited to be returning to several other labs at UChicago in November to facilitate more lab clean-outs.
by Jenn Kloc 
by Derek Doeing 