7 Avenues To Business Sustainability Beyond Covid-19

Julie Starr • August 20, 2020



From nuclear wars to pandemics, and pollution, humanity’s existence has been threatened several times. Today we are faced with a test; the COVID-19 pandemic, which has infected over twenty million people globally and claimed hundreds of thousands of lives since reportedly breaking out last year. One of the areas that have been affected by this crisis is the business world, and many businesses are evaluating their business models to determine how well it will hold during an emergency. However, most organizations don’t have a more profound comprehension of sustainability . 

What is a sustainable business?

From an extensive point of view, sustainable business has its activities based on environmental, financial, and societal concerns.  Yet, this way towards sustainability isn’t that simple for most companies. Hence, the need to put together these seven avenues to business sustainability post-pandemic era to empower the future of companies and the community. 

How to develop a sustainable business?

  • Make a smart, incorporated open approach

Building a sound open approach to conservation issues is certainly mind-boggling. The uncertainty regarding how governments failed to act on issues that challenge the business community adds to the already existing planning burden on companies. Businesses can only overcome this with a solid and consistent cohesive policy to adopt modern standards and technologies, and so train their employees for sustainability. But this most importantly cannot be done without having a clear understanding of government directions on related issues. Therefore, it is important to build a national dialogue on responsible consumption and construct a national discourse on accountable utilization.

  • Build influential structures that promote sustainability

Building an organizational structure that supports sustainability is no simple task. Setting up objectives for the business will assist you with advancing toward the future. However, this could be challenged should there be issues like bad or under-staffing, bad organizational structure, poor communication channels, or something different altogether. You will need to have an organized command center throughout the various business units and departments. It has been noted that one key challenge in maintaining a business is the inability to communicate the vision of business sustainability effectively. An example is re-appropriating, which gives organizations access to assist in finishing assignments on schedule and arrive at their anticipated objectives. On the off chance that you have more work than laborers, re-appropriating is probably the ideal approach to ensure the job is finished effectively and productively.

  • Establish sustainability as a core principle

A study in 2007 suggested that business heads or chief executive officers are rotating rapidly through jobs with an average of six years in the US. This poses a challenge to a business requirement for a sound sustainable policy, which involves long-term investment. Practical organizations truly accept that environmental change, exploitative resource utilization, and contamination are high among concerns for which they can assist in finding lasting solutions. Should the leadership of businesses realize the importance of sustainability and its relevance, there will be a concerted effort to appreciate it. Researching on the subject, attending workshops and conferences focused on the sustainable and joining industry alliances towards global goals attainment will be a decent start. 

  • Adopt the culture of outsourcing 

It is an obvious fact that organizations are continually searching for new, improved approaches to decrease expenses and better meet progressively high client needs. Pressures from the competition diminished processing durations, and an increase in customer demands have implied that several companies are switching to outsourcing to keep up. Outsourcing accrues numerous benefits to businesses. Notable among them include improved productivity and efficiency, vast flexibility and cost-saving. The latter supports the fact that every organization seeks to reduce its overhead cost to improve its financial standings. Outsourcing does not just take away the cost of investing in machinery and tools but reduces the cost of hiring and training of staff as already existing field experts will complete the work. It also reduces the number of staff on a company’s payroll. Accounting, for example, is an aspect of the business you can outsource and companies requiring accounting services can visit https://xmigrowth.com/accounting/ for all their accounting needs. 

  • Build an innovative environment to support business sustainability 

The application of a sustainability lens to every aspect of the business requires a certain level of change in strategies. The need for sustainable business growth will call for several adjustments in certain areas which includes;

  • Planning and developing products or services that yield sustainable outcomes
  • Investing in business managers and CEOs to focus on sustainability-driven executions, to ensure leadership strategies conform with global goals and standards
  • Promoting products and services that induce sustainable choices from customers
  • Incorporate a strategy to repair social trust

There has been disintegrated trust in business following the global financial crisis. Therefore, there must be a conscious effort by business heads to regain the trust of its employees, customers, and society at large. Companies must put in place measures to repair the social license to operate in their communities. The social license basically refers to the unspoken readiness of members in a business community or region to allow a company to operate. Besides openly communicating their sustainable interaction with the society, there must be an effort to partner with the civil society, governments, communities, customers, and its own workers towards reestablishing their trust in the business. 

  • Approach competitors as collaborators

A strong collaborative effort is a way to quicken sustainability within a business and the wider industry as a whole. Organizations can do everything imaginable to improve their natural and social effects inside their own activities. However, the large advances are made when organizations adjust the activities of providers, merchants, and every other individual from their worth chains. At the point where one key participant in a division turns out to be sustainability-centered, it drives others inside that segment to go with the same pattern.

This type of rivalry is energized by organizations, not just in light of the positive effect on the environment but also drives them to maintain their sustainability-based advancements.

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.