Blog

– by COASST Intern: Kathryn Whitmer –

If you get some new tags anytime soon, you might notice a slight change – they’re square now! This shift from our old circle tags to the new square ones might seem slight, but behind the scenes it has been a long process. It began many months ago, when we were running low on tags and ordered new ones from our source here at University of Washington (UW) – where the COASST staff offices are located – but found that the cost had increased to about 50 cents a tag which was unfortunately out of our price range (we need 1000s of them!). So we thought, what if we make them ourselves? And so the journey began.

We reached out to COASSTers back in late 2024 looking for suggestions on new, cost effective tags, and heard back from BB Bainbridge who (as a former product designer) provided critical insight. He recommended we use bamboo and was kind enough to send some our way. Bamboo is more sustainable than other hardwoods since it can grow very fast (only 3-5 years to reach maturity) and can be harvested while leaving the roots intact to produce another crop. Our old tags used salvaged wood from the UW, which meant relying on there being enough wood in stock and often involved long wait times after requesting tag resupplies. Now we can order our own bamboo when we need to and still rest easy knowing it is a more sustainable option.

A new material though meant concerns about how long the tags would last outside, we have had some birds be refinds for years! So BB cut some out on a friend’s laser cutter and did a field test to see if they persisted in the harsh environments they are left in. He left some on a roof (he assured us that this is normal in product testing!), some in the water, and some on a beach. He even made cages to prevent the crows from taking the tags for themselves. These are only for beached birds, not live ones! The tags held up super well over the course of a month, so we dove into learning how to work laser cutters ourselves.

First came making the perfect design file. BB suggested square tags because they produce much less waste in the cutting process, both in material, time, and energy. Each border cut now works on two tags instead of one, we can get many more tags out of one piece of wood than we could before, and the process takes less time in the laser cutter tray. Our Participant Coordinator’s partner, Kevin, is an architect and has spent lots of time in the computer programs needed for this task so he dove in on his own time and made us a couple of file options. It truly takes a village to get these things done!

File in hand, we went into a Makerspace on campus and spent hours figuring out how to even work a laser cutter. Then we needed to find what the perfect settings are (laser power, laser speed, thickness, etc.). We burned quite a few tags during this phase, but at least the campfire smell of the burning wood is a good one.

We have since been hard at work producing as many tags as possible. Our interns have proven to be key to this process as they are able to go to the Makerspace themselves and follow a protocol to produce the tags. Since it takes about 20 minutes to cut out one full board of tags they can even get homework done on the side!

We are able to get 144 tags from just one 8×8 piece of bamboo, which totals a cost of less than 1 cent per tag. This is 44% more tags from one piece of wood than we could get with the prior circular shape. Less waste!

So, next time you need more tags, look out for our new square ones! We are not going to waste the leftover circle ones though, so you might receive a mix of the two, but now we can have fully stocked, sustainable, and affordable tags for all COASSTers from here on out!

And a huge shoutout and thank you to BB Bainbridge, Kevin, and the COASST interns for all their hard work.