Can You Truly Take Tech To The Green Side?

Julie Starr • January 26, 2022

When it comes to sustainability in business, digital technologies are often painted as the bad guys. Certainly, the fact that the internet alone is responsible for as much as 3.7% of global greenhouse emissions is enough to make any ethically conscious company shudder. Unfortunately, with online activity now essential for success, even businesses that are aware of this often high cost of tech usage have no choice but to invest. 

Of course, sustainability focuses like ethical energy usage can go a long way towards offsetting this damage, but there’s still a lot of ground to cover before it’s possible to even come close to limiting the damage created this way. Hence why, for green-minded businesses, something called sustainable technology is increasingly becoming a pressing focus.

As well as referring to the most sustainable sourcing of energy reserves, this term has largely come to refer to technology that provides environmental good. This sustainable focus can both reduce the amount of technology being used and, hopefully, offset the damage created by residual digitizations. Keep on reading to find out just a few of the most pressing sustainable technology focuses currently making that possible.

# 1 – Automating unnecessary processes

Automation is responsible for a great many of the sustainable focuses that we’ll be discussing here, but it deserves a mention of its own because automating even unrelated in-house processes can make a huge difference to energy outputs. Targeted solutions like automated process discovery that specifically highlight weak points in a company’s digital infrastructure can especially help to eliminate time-consuming and eco-damaging tech-led processes. Furthermore, automation significantly reduces the time each team member must spend in front of a computer, which can lead to significantly more time spent on eco-focuses including sustainable practices, eco-collaborations, and general environmental good. All because of the implementation of a technology that you previously dismissed for being as bad as the rest. 

# 2 – Sourcing supply chain improvements

As can be seen from the implementation of certain technologies such as shelf-canning robots and built-in sensors by companies like Walmart , technology that helps with the management and simplification of general supply chain processes can also make a huge difference from an environmental standpoint. Again, this is in large part thanks to reducing the need for far lengthier tech-led manual processes for the same purpose. However, the ability of this technology to significantly reduce supply chain wastage is perhaps its main selling point. This is especially evident in Walmart food chains, where self-led technology has significantly reduced food waste with a positive environmental impact when paired with general reductions in output, largely offsetting any energy that these technologies require to function in the first place.

# 3 – Seeking more sustainable solutions

Generally speaking, sustainable solutions such as collaboration and energy sourcing , etc. are limited to things like word of mouth recommendations, or the options that are closest to your company location. However, by providing simplified access to far wider-reaching sustainable solutions, internet usage, in particular, can lead to significant improvements elsewhere in your company. This is going to be difficult to justify if members of your team spend hours on the internet seeking sustainable partnerships of this nature, but targeted, limited searching for the right companies to work with can make a huge difference to processes overall. From changing energy suppliers to ensuring partnership with a more eco-friendly delivery service, well-chosen searches of this kind can more than make up for the energy usage they cost in the first place. Offsetting energy consumption with automation, in general, can especially afford you the energy usage needed to enjoy this benefit without compromising on your green standing in general.

# 4 – Using tech for social good

Outside of making certain sustainable business practices possible , it’s also important to note that a generalized focus on using technology to do environmental good can also largely justify the energy needed to make them possible in the first place. Social media campaigns like those seen from companies like Ford are a prime example of this, with this otherwise necessary aspect of digital marketing operations being targeted towards direct environmental good. From petitions to fundraising campaigns and beyond, taking social good online can certainly help to see tech doing more environmental good than it does damage over time.

Sustainable technology may be a step away from everything you’ve learned, but the reality is that it isn’t difficult to both offset digital damage and find a positive way around it when you keep these unique, and importantly green, approaches in mind. 

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.