Can Anything Be Done To Make Manufacturing More Sustainable?

Julie Starr • May 31, 2022



If we want to make the modern economy more sustainable , we need to address inefficiencies in manufacturing. For more than 100 years, manufacturing has been a poster child for environmental challenges. The “dark satanic mills” of the 19th century fired the popular imagination and led many people to believe that manufacturing was humanity’s greatest sin. 

The truth is a little more nuanced than that. Modern factories are actually incredibly clean and careful with their waste production. Heavy-duty chemical pallets for industrial use are often sustainable in their materials, too. But you could be doing more. You could be looking at the materials you choose with more depth. Businesses are doing plenty to ensure that they are sustainable right now.  However, they could go further. In this post, we take a look at all the things that manufacturers could do to make their operations more sustainable .

Save Time

Sometimes simply speeding up your operations or running a cycle faster without using more energy can result in less impact on the environment . If you can get more done in a shorter amount of time, then you can shut down your systems and save on power. In a large-scale production facility, you may be able to reduce how many machines you need to turn out the same quantity of products.

Share Power Between Machines

Factories often lose a lot of energy in the form of heat. When machines spin up to their full-cycle speed, they either dissipate energy into manufactured products or in the form of heat as they wind down. The latter is problematic because it represents wasted energy. 

However, power-sharing among machine tools is becoming more popular. For instance, seaming machines and cutting machines often share power through a single wire. By sharing servos and other opponents that contain kinetic energy the system can redistribute power between different functions when required by the process itself. This is a little bit like how hybrid cars take waste energy from braking and use it to charge the engine.

Choose Your Vendors Wisely

Another thing you can do to make your enterprise more sustainable is to choose your vendors wisely. Find a metal component manufacturer that focuses on reducing their carbon emissions and waste. Look for vendors who actively promote their green credentials.

Reduce Or Eliminate Pollution

Consumers are becoming increasingly educated on the environmental effects of the production of certain materials. They will often reject consumer items made according to manufacturing processes that generate potentially damaging byproducts. For instance, consumers are interested in machinery that uses as little coolant as possible or in manufacturing processes that reduce the number of offcuts. 

Recycle More

Recycling has become a major issue at trade shows and conferences. It is no longer acceptable for companies to fill giant hoppers with waste material and then send them to landfills. Consumers now want them to account for all of the energy that they use in their production processes, not just the energy cost of material that goes directly into products. 

In many cases, manufacturers are addressing this issue by bringing recycling facilities on-site . By moving facilities in this way, they are reducing the energy costs associated with transporting items large distances, cutting down on energy use even further.

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.