5 Great Ways You Can Make Your Business More Environmentally Friendly

Julie Starr • February 10, 2022



We’ve all got to do our part somewhere along the line, and as a member of authority within your business, you have the power to do a lot more than most people can. Most daily activities leave some kind of impact on the environment, and that impact can be altered depending on how you choose to do things. If you’re in the position to not only change how you do things, but those working for you as well, then you can make a huge difference with just a few changes here and there. Of course, you can’t do much to change how people treat the environment outside of the workplace, but one workday can impact the environment significantly. 

Update your cleaning process

When you work with a lot of heavy machinery or large metal parts, there’s a chance that you often find yourself having to clean them with chemicals or other wasteful processes. There’s a way around this wasteful cleaning process, and it’s with solutions like abrasive blasting. You might be asking yourself, what is abrasive blasting ? Well, you can read more about it online, but to give you the short and sweet – it’s the process of using different materials to blast a surface to either clean or leave a different finish.

With these alternative solutions, you can use sustainable and recyclable materials to complete the cleaning process, meaning that you won’t have to dispose of any kind of chemicals at the end of it. For some businesses, replacing a wasteful cleaning process with an eco-friendly one is a huge improvement.

Turn it off

In offices, there’s often a lot of energy being used at one time. Everyone needs their own desk and computer, and that’s naturally going to use a lot of energy to keep everything running. However, not every piece of equipment needs to be kept running all of the time. Computers have power management settings that allow you to keep them from using their full power when they’re not in use. You don’t necessarily have to turn them off completely every time you leave the desk, but using energy-saving modes that come pre-installed can make a huge difference over time.

Some offices even like to leave their equipment on overnight. Not just computers, but things like printers, copiers, and so on. This isn’t necessary, and when there’s not going to be anyone around to use them, you’d be saving a lot of energy to have them powered off during the night.

It may also help to know that not all pieces of the equipment you use are energy efficient. Older appliances typically are much less efficient than newer ones, so replacing them when you get the chance can actually save you money.

Suppliers and manufacturers

If you want your business to be truly eco-friendly, it’s not just your business that you should be looking at – but your partners . Partnering with and supporting environmentally friendly suppliers who want to make just as big an impact as you do is important. Continuous success with these practices is highly important, as you’ll be reducing waste and proving that success is just as possible without all of the environmentally harmful practices.

Going digital

A lot of waste can go down to office supplies and unnecessary paper usage. You don’t always need to use these materials, especially with modern technology. Doing as many things as possible digitally can help to greatly reduce paper and plastic usage in a workplace environment. Of course, some things will require physical representation – but whenever you can, you should try to make sure it’s done digitally. Not everything needs to be printed and put in its own plastic binder or file.

Many different forms of the document can be made, signed, interacted with, and amended on a computer, making it even more convenient for you than a physical piece of paper. You’ll find that by going online, you’re not just reducing waste, but saving time.

Convenient options

One thing that should be considered for every workplace is trying to enforce recycling. More people would be a lot more open to recycling if it was easier for them, and if you were to add more recycling bins to your workplace – you can reduce a lot of the waste that happens from your employees. Consider even putting up signs next to the bins to ensure that the rules are followed, and you’ll find that a lot fewer recyclable objects are being wasted.

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.