From 3 to 13 December you can see the exhibition Plastic Justice at the Kamerlingh Onnes Building. Esther Kentin, coördinator of the Leiden Advocacy Project on Plastic, saw the exhibition at the Plastic Health Summit and initiated a collaboration with the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague.

After years of lobbying by environmental activists, a deposit scheme for small plastic bottles is to be introduced on 1 July 2021. One of the leaders in the fight is alumnus Merijn Tinga. The university will have collection points for plastic bottles and is also supporting the Plastic Spotter citizen…

On paper it is recycled, but in reality enormous quantities of plastic waste from the Netherlands end up in Asian seas. Researchers from the Leiden Institute of Environmental Sciences charted the fate of plastic food packaging waste from the Netherlands. They published their results on July 8 in the…

Roberto Arciero is part of RESPIRE project (Research Educational and Storytelling Project in Italian Remote Ecosystem), an international and interdisciplinary research team led by Martina Capriotti (University of Camerino) that received the National Geographic Meridian grant. Among the different topics,…

In a new series of articles, we explore how the humanities study topics related to sustainability. First up: waste. How and why study waste as a humanities scholar? We asked Elena Burgos Martinez, University Lecturer South and Southeast Asian Studies, and Katarzyna Cwiertka, Professor of Modern Japan…

Leiden PhD candidate Jo-Anne Verschoor discovered that nearly twenty percent of the bacterial strains she studied could degrade plastic, though they needed some encouragement to do so. ‘Bacteria are just like people,’ says Verschoor. Her research was published in the journal Communications Biology,…

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A group of biology students are working on a solution to the world’s plastics problem by getting bacteria to make biodegradable plastic.

We all know smoking is bad for our health. But we might not have known that the cigarette filters that litter our streets also impact the environment. Esther Kentin is a lecturer at Leiden Law School. She is raising awareness of the University’s cigarette butt problem.

What motivates citizens to participate in a citizen science project on plastic pollution? And does that motivation change over time? Liselotte Rambonnet tried to answer these and other questions with her research on the Clean Rivers (‘Schone Rivieren’) project. Rambonnet is a PhD student at the Institute…

Leiden Law Cast is a podcast made by Leiden Law School, Leiden University, for everyone who wants to learn more about current legal issues.

Whales in the vicinity of the city of Auckland, New Zealand consume large amounts of microplastics every day. A team of international researchers reached this conclusion after carefully examining whale poop. The team included Thijs Bosker, Associate Professor in Environmental Sciences at Leiden University…

Martin van Hecke en Anne Meeussen publiceren in het tijdschrift Nature over mechanische metamaterialen. Ze hebben een nieuwe klasse multistabiele materialen ontdekt. Dit is gebaseerd op ribbeltjes plastic.

Countries that import plastic waste recycle an average of at least 63 percent of it. This is surprising, as we previously believed that the vast majority was incinerated or ended up as litter. This was discovered by PhD candidate Kai Li and his colleagues from the Institute of Environmental Sciences in…

Nano-plastics cause malformations. Meiru Wang, researcher at the Institute of Biology Leiden, looked at the extreme effects polystyrene nano-particles could have, using chicken embryos as a model. Her results were quite alarming. Especially as nano-particles are everywhere. In the air, floating through…

An image has great powers of persuasion. It is said that ‘a picture is worth more than a thousand words’. But these days, images can easily be manipulated with severe consequences. ‘Perhaps it’s time to reconsider the value we attach to images’, says Elize de Mul, whose PhD thesis deals with ‘digital…

Auke-Florian Hiemstra is the Leidsch Dagblad Person of the Year 2022.

The university is launching a campaign to focus extra attention on our smoke-free university locations. The University is using aptly named cigarette barrels to try to show clearly just how many cigarette filters are being saved from the environment. How harmful are these cigarette filters to the e…

Several media published articles on the latest research from a team including Thijs Bosker, Associate Professor Environmental Sciences, last week. The research has shown that whales in the vicinity of Auckland New Zeeland consume three million microplastics a day.

Nanoplastics can accumulate in developing hearts, according to a study by biologist Meiru Wang from Leiden University. Her research on chicken embryos sheds new light on how these tiny plastic particles pose a threat to our health.

Freezers set three degrees higher, a recycling bin for plastic petri dishes or timer switches installed on equipment: a growing number of Leiden University laboratories are taking small – but effective – steps to reduce their environmental impact, via the internationally recognized Laboratory Efficiency…

Leiden academics Remco Breuker and Auke-Florian Hiemstra stand to win the title of Person of the Year.

The cargo lost at sea as a result of the MSC Zoe disaster should be considered environmental pollution and information about it should be made public. This was the case made by Leiden Law School’s Leiden Advocacy Project on Plastic (LAPP). Following their investigation, the government has finally decided…

Canal Watch (De Grachtwacht), which has been cleaning canals since 2018, has received the Dutch Research Council (NWO) Communication Initiative Award.

Defending your PhD research in front of nearly 300 elementary school students: that was the challenge faced by PhD candidates Jo-Anne Verschoor and Marinka de Willigen during the VUURVLIEGEN competition organised by the Centrum JongerenCommunicatie Chemie (C3). After an exciting competition, the children…

Toen in 2019 honderden afvalcontainers in de Waddenzee vielen, wilde de overheid geen informatie vrijgeven over wat er in de containers zat. Vijf jaar later weten we eindelijk meer, nadat hoogleraar Esther Kentin beroep deed op de Wet Open Overheid.

PhD defence

At the entrance of the Van Steenis building you may now visit an exhibition on material culture. Unexpectedly, it does not display pottery or tools, but building materials. And recent ones at that! Check out the exhibition on Legos lost at sea, conceived and assembled by PhD candidate Maia Casna. ‘These…

Leiden's iGEM team has won high honours at the Grand Jamboree in Paris. The biology students came second in the Overgraduate category with their project PHAse Out. They also took home awards for Best Biomanufacturing Project, Best Wiki and Best Entrepreneurship as well as a Gold Medal. To top it all…

How can you do your bit for sustainability? Students from Leiden University have launched an interactive website with 150 sustainable initiatives in and around The Hague. The website Sustainable The Hague makes it easy to find a sustainable shop, restaurant or community initiative in your local area…

How do you count the nanoplastics in your body? Leiden researchers published a method in Nature Protocols today that should make this easier. Important for both environmental and medicine research.

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Life returned to something resembling normal after Covid but other crises soon took its place. These great challenges are also being felt at the University and our researchers are working on solutions. The nitrogen crisis, problems with young people’s services and an increasingly urgent climate crisis:…

Op de dag van de duurzaamheid van 10 oktober startte de 'Billiecup' pre-pilot op de Faculteit der Rechtsgeleerdheid. Aanwezig waren 'plastic soup surfer' Merijn Tinga, Bart Hemmes van het Leiden University Green Office (LUGO) en Esther Kentin, docent bij instituut Metajuridica & projectleider Leiden…

Having lectures on sustainability when you're a first-year student of Law, or a course on climate change when you're studying Public Administration may sound odd, but that is just what Associate Professor in Environmental Sciences Thijs Bosker wants to see happening. Together with his colleague Paul…

Professor of Fungal Genetics and Biotechnology Arthur Ram explains how fungi can help us be more sustainable.

Cryogenic memories, antibiotic treatment for urinary tract infections and recycling plastic sustainably. These are the subjects of the three NWO-XS grants awarded to Leiden Science researchers.

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Ava Bauer’s successor has been announced. From September 2023, Nalani Verwoord will be the new assessor of Leiden Science. Nalani is a third-year Biology student.