4 Easy Steps To Protect Your Sustainable Business

Julie Starr • November 3, 2020



Starting and running a business is no easy feat. Although many companies are springing up, only 33% of them survive within the first ten years, and it might even be a lot more difficult for green and sustainable companies. These statistics can be somewhat discouraging, whether you just started your business or have been in operation for a few years. Therefore, you must take steps to ensure that your business is adequately protected to withstand all types of challenges it might encounter. So, how can you protect your business? Here are a few steps you can take to ensure that your business withstands the test of time:

Protect your data

It is essential for sustainable businesses to store critical information, whether it is employee records, customer information, or transactions. It is even more imperative for sustainable enterprises to store data in the cloud to reduce how much paper they use. Otherwise, you might find your business as part of the 60% that closed down due to data breaches. Plus, you need not worry about your hard drive getting crashed or losing your data to natural disasters like fires. When you take steps to protect your data, you lessen the risk of your data getting misused for vices such as phishing scams and fraud. What you can do to protect your business’ information is to install firewalls, organize cybersecurity training sessions for your employees, and use strong passwords.

Hire an accountant

If your sustainable business has been in operation for some time now, and you see a lot of growth and potential, it might be the best time to hire an accountant. An accountant can provide you with expert advice to assist with your development, including hiring new employees, managing utility payments, and expanding your office space. If possible, you can hire an in-house accountant for your business. Otherwise, it is perfectly okay to outsource. You can weigh the options to find the one that best suits your business’s needs, as well as the budget. You can also use a Verifiable Credential Platform to ensure they have the right credentials for the job.

Get business insurance

When you are operating a sustainable business, you are responsible for your employees’ and customers’ well-being. Whatever decisions you make for your company affects them, and when you have business insurance, it might protect you financially from some of the consequences. Many businesses typically get general liability insurance that covers parties that are harmed by your business’ practices. Other states require that you get other forms of business insurance, such as workman’s compensation insurance, which protects your employees that get hurt while working. Companies like Simply Business offer various types of business insurance, depending on the type of business you operate. Check out simplybusiness.com for more essential information.

Research your customers

Before you start working with a new client, ensure that you conduct a full credit check, especially if you render a service. That will protect you and your business from having stacks of unpaid invoices and defaulting customers. Ensure that before you work for a customer, you must have a contract. If any problem develops, the contract or agreement will be the piece of evidence that might help you get the money you deserve.

Regardless of your business’s size, it would be best if you adopted measures to secure it. Hopefully, these tips should help you get started.

Smart Sensors, Smarter Supply Chains: Enhancing Traceability in Food & Beverage

By Julie Starr • June 20, 2025
In today’s competitive food and beverage (F&B) landscape, traceability is no longer a compliance checkbox—it’s a differentiator. The ability to track every step of a product’s journey, from origin to shelf, is vital for regulatory accuracy and to ensure brand integrity, supply chain agility, and consumer trust. Add smart sensors to the mix: the quiet, tireless observers revolutionizing supply chain intelligence. Traceability Has a Data Problem Despite digitization across many F&B operations, most traceability systems still rely on fragmented or manual data inputs. Batch numbers, barcodes, and handwritten logs often stand between a supplier and clarity when things go wrong. This approach struggles with latency and scale. When contamination or delays occur, root cause analysis is slow, costly, and damaging. Smart sensors shift this paradigm by embedding real-time, contextual intelligence into every stage of the supply chain . Whether monitoring humidity in transit or recording fill-level precision in bottling plants, they remove the guesswork by turning physical conditions into structured, time-stamped data. From Passive Monitoring to Active Optimization Sensors used to be reactive tools, alerting operators to anomalies. But smart sensors now play a proactive role in process control. They measure, and they interpret. For example, temperature sensors embedded in cold chain logistics can dynamically adjust cooling systems or flag threshold breaches before spoilage occurs. These advancements reduce waste and loss at a systemic level. In a production facility, smart sensors integrated with PLCs can enforce recipe compliance, verify clean-in-place processes, and detect micro-stoppages in real-time. This enables operations to pivot faster and isolate inefficiencies before they cascade downstream. Trust is Built on Transparency Consumers are paying more attention to what they eat and drink. They’re looking beyond labels, expecting visibility into how ingredients are sourced, processed, and handled. Smart sensors make this level of transparency achievable —without burdening manufacturers with excessive manual oversight. By capturing metadata throughout production and distribution, these sensors create a digital footprint that’s tamper-resistant and instantly accessible. When this data is integrated with a central platform, brands can respond confidently to audits, recalls, and quality assurance challenges with a level of precision that would be impossible through legacy systems. Intelligence Without Infrastructure Overhaul One common misconception is that adding smart sensors requires a top-down reinvention of supply chain infrastructure. In reality, companies can deploy edge sensors in a modular, scalable way. Many modern solutions offer plug-and-play functionality, allowing for fast integration with existing machinery and MES systems. This is where suppliers like alps-machine.com are reshaping expectations. Rather than pushing proprietary ecosystems, they design sensor-ready equipment with interoperability in mind. This future-proofs investment and keeps businesses nimble in the face of regulatory or market shifts. Designing for Data Longevity Sensors are only as powerful as the context they capture. A smart implementation ensures the data collected can be standardized, stored securely, and accessed meaningfully across departments. This means moving beyond local dashboards toward centralized, queryable datasets that inform everything from supplier contracts to marketing claims. As AI and predictive analytics become more accessible, these data-rich environments will unlock new capabilities—such as predicting demand spikes based on real-time freshness indicators or adjusting production schedules dynamically based on in-transit sensor feedback. Final Thoughts: Smarter Isn’t Optional Traceability isn’t solved by more paperwork—it’s solved by embedded intelligence. Smart sensors don’t just help businesses know what happened; they help prevent the wrong things from happening at all. For companies in the food and beverage sector, adopting smart sensors is less about chasing innovation and more about enabling resilience, speed, and confidence in every decision.

Eco-Friendly Garden Prep: Summer Tips for a Greener Business Space

By Julie Starr • June 5, 2025
If you're lucky enough to have a garden as part of your business, taking some time to set it up for summer is a great investment of your energy. Not only will it be ready for your customers to spend time in, but you can also incorporate some eco-friendly elements into it. Many people just think about the property and what eco-friendly updates they can make , but there are plenty that you can implement in your garden. This gives you the best of both worlds. You own a sacred and beautiful place for your customers to spend their summer, and at the same time, you can do your part for a better planet. If this is the route you want to take, then you also need to consider how to do this with the different seasons. To help you on your journey, here are some top tips for preparing your garden for summer. Plant trees and flowers Planting trees and flowers in your garden is a must. It will make a beautiful scene of nature for everyone to enjoy. Trees will provide people and animals with shade, as well as provide a habitat for wildlife. More trees are needed in the world because they purify the air that we breathe. Flowers, especially if you plant with pollinators in mind, can be an excellent way to attract bees and butterflies, which contribute largely to the earth. Use natural pest control When preparing your garden for summer, you can do this more sustainably and kindly by using natural pest control. Simply by planting trees and flowers, you are likely to attract lots of different wildlife, some of which may destroy your efforts. While all wildlife should be considered, you may need to take measures. Some better and more eco-friendly ways you can do this, as opposed to spraying toxic chemicals onto your plants and into the air, you can implement companion planting, using protective nets over your crops, choosing resilient plants, using natural repellents, and encouraging natural predators so nature can do its thing. Maintain your garden Maintaining your garden in itself can make it more eco-friendly. Composting your garden waste regularly, and kitchen waste can help you to reduce overall waste and create nutrient-rich soil. This is a great cycle of sustainability. You can also keep on top of things that need cleaning and replacing, so you can recycle the materials for other garden structures and projects, and repurpose things around your garden before they become waste. If you have features in your garden like a swimming pool, then a regular pool maintenance service is going to be vital in keeping your water consumption to a minimum, as when it is cleaned and maintained, it will need to be drained and refilled less as well as using less energy. You could also consider how you can use natural purification methods to reduce chemical usage and support biodiversity right in your backyard. Your garden is just an eco-friendly project waiting to be built. Use these top tips to help you get started.