Eco-Friendly Office Money Savers

Julie Starr • June 16, 2021



All businesses can play their part in helping the environment. Making a number of small changes can have a large impact over the course of a year, and there’s always room to make more. And these changes can benefit your business even more if they help you save money too.

So what types of changes can your business make to save money while taking a more sustainable approach? Take a look at the following ideas for some eco-friendly office money savers.

Cut down on your energy use

Your office’s energy costs can be very high, especially if you waste a lot of energy. But taking a more proactive approach to cutting down your energy use could see those costs decline. Work out where your biggest energy consumption comes from and find ways of bringing it down. 

When replacing old equipment, make sure you replace it with equipment with lower energy consumption. Technology is constantly evolving, with manufacturers aiming to develop new ways of bringing down energy use from their products.

Encourage employees to think about their own energy use at work

While there are some fundamental changes you can make to your office energy use, there a lot of changes your employees can make that will not only help them think about their behavior at work but at home too. 

Some of the company-wide green policies you can implement are:

  • Avoid charging equipment during peak office hours – if items need charging, they can be done overnight when energy tends to be cheaper.
  • Encourage employees to turn things off at the mains when equipment isn’t in use, and when they leave the office.
  • Try to open windows and let natural air circulate instead of relying on the A/C constantly. 

Close the office at a set time

Setting a closing time for your office can bring a lot of benefits to your business. Not only can it stop your employees from working excessive hours, but you could also benefit from reduced operating costs. If you’re worried about changing business functions or a drop-in service, there are ways around this. Having a live call answering service can mean you can continue to take calls from customers and clients, even without a team based in the office. You could even consider finishing up early on Fridays (especially during the summer) to give your employees a reward, while also cutting down on some of your running costs.

Adopt energy-efficient and smart lighting

Office lighting is essential, but it doesn’t have to come at a high price. By adopting energy-efficient or smart lighting, you can save a lot of money over time, while also making sure you run a more sustainable office space.

You should also assess the lighting in your building – there could be areas where the amount of lighting is unnecessary due to being unused or near large window areas. 

Phase-out single-use plastic

You’ll have read about a lot of companies phasing out single use plastic , and if large corporations can do it, so can yours. Making a commitment to go plastic-free shows that your business is taking things seriously, making you accountable to your pledge. And it can start in your office.

From plastic cups and straws to finding alternatives to plastic packaging, there are different ways you can say goodbye to plastic for good. Learn lessons from other businesses to discover the innovative ways your business can get rid of single-use plastic.

Cut down on your travel

In light of COVID-19, more and more businesses have had to get on board with remote working. Even as things start getting back to normal, could you continue practices such as video conferencing to avoid meeting travel? It will reduce your costs significantly, and help you reduce your carbon footprint too.

You could also consider moving to a smaller office space if more of your employees will be working remotely – there’s no point maintaining a large space with heating, electricity, etc. if you’re not going to be at full capacity.

Becoming a more sustainable, eco-friendly business should be high on your priorities list. And if it saves you money at the same time, then that’s a fantastic bonus. Begin by making small changes to see how they can fit into your business, over time you can make even further changes that can help your company become one of the leaders for sustainability in your industry.

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.