How To Market And Grow Your Sustainable Business

Julie Starr • April 18, 2022



The success of your sustainable business can depend on a variety of factors, but one of the most important contributing features is the size of your reach. If you have a wide audience that’s constantly growing, then your sustainable business is going to stand a much better chance of attracting a steady, respectable income that makes all of your hard work more than worthwhile. But how can you go about marketing and subsequently growing your business so that you and your team can thrive for the foreseeable future? Thankfully, there are so many simple steps that you can follow to spread the word about your sustainable products and services far and wide, and there’s truly no time like the present to get started. So, if you’re interested in finding out more, then read on to discover some of the most effective tips and tricks that you can utilize now!

Develop A Strong Social Media Presence 

One of the best options that you can pursue to market and grow your sustainable business is through developing a strong social media presence . The most popular social media platforms attract several billion users each and every day, so cashing in on the opportunity to advertise your brand to these users can be extremely effective in growing your audience. There are so many different options when it comes to marketing on social media, and it’s never been easier to build your own commercial profile. All you need is an email address to get started, as you can craft a unique branded profile that includes specific details about your sustainable business such as your location, your ethos, and a link to your website. Once you’ve made a page of your own you can start posting content and utilizing the commercial features to market the aforementioned content in order to attract a wider audience. Your content should maintain a set theme so that other users can instantly associate it with your brand, and it’s a good idea to include green in your content to remind your audience of your commitment to sustainability. You can create your own ad campaigns that will be sent to targeted audiences whom social media platforms have already located through their commercial services, increasing the effectiveness to ensure you can gain the most positive results. Be sure to include links to products and services that you market on social media, otherwise there will be little point in utilizing the platform other than growing your network and reputation. 

Hold Your Own Sustainable Events  

Another brilliant option that you can choose to pursue to spread the word about your sustainable business is to hold your own events. Commercial events can be a great way to grow your audience, especially in local terms if you want to attract new customers from nearby. Events can be anything, from shows that present your products and services to the world to fundraising opportunities that can be great for your reputation. Choosing the type of event that you want to host is likely the hardest step, but you can always plan a number of different events throughout the year if you’re finding it difficult to decide. Finding the right location for your event will have a big influence on the way it’s received by your guests, as you need to choose the best venue that’s aesthetically pleasing while maintaining all of the necessary amenities to provide your guests with the best experience. Whether you choose to hold your corporate event at Evins Mill , at an outdoor venue, or even at a more modern city center spot that’s easy to access for commuting guests, you’ll need to personalize the space to make sure your attendees can recognize your brand and appreciate the effort that your business has gone to. You can hang branded posters, hand out leaflets or even get more creative and fun by using balloons and other lighthearted decors that set the scene for an enjoyable event. It can also be a good idea to create some kind of feature wall or other similar photography opportunities that your guests can pose in front of for pictures, as this is a great form of free advertising when they post these on social media later on or even simply show their family and friends. A charity event is a little different as you will need to work together with your chosen charity to plan a joint occasion, but you can expect masses of positive feedback from your audience for taking the time to raise money for a charitable institution. 

Utilize Traditional Forms Of Advertising 

Though modern forms of advertising such as social media marketing can be extremely effective, more traditional options can also be just as productive when you are attempting to grow your audience and spread the word about your sustainable brand. One of the best examples of traditional advertising is email marketing, though it may first have been popular decades ago, it’s managed to adapt and evolve with the times to maintain its efficiency. In today’s world, most people have their email accounts linked directly to their smartphones, so any email marketing message that you send to your audience will likely pop up on their screens in a matter of seconds. The fact that email marketing uses the internet also provides you with the opportunity to directly link to your website, helping to direct even more traffic to your platform so that you can increase your chances of gaining a healthy profit. Make sure your email ads are attractive, eye-catching, and to-the-point, as they need to be short enough to draw the reader in without providing so much information that they no longer want to learn more by clicking further. In addition to email marketing, traditional methods like billboard adverts and leafleting can also be of benefit for your sustainable business. If you’re aiming to attract new local customers, then locating a billboard beside a high-traffic road that’s often very busy is the perfect way to send more clients to your brand.

Form New Partnerships 

A niche advantage that sustainable businesses can access is a wealth of partnerships with other larger brands, as many will be interested in utilizing your products and services to improve their own brand commitments to sustainability and more eco-friendly operations. Choosing to partner with a large brand can provide you with masses of advertisement opportunities, as they will no doubt speak proudly about their relationship with your sustainable business so that they can reach out to eco-minded customers. When you form a partnership they will be paying you for the products or services that they receive, so you’ll also be gaining a new steady stream of income that you can rely on even during off-seasons. Forming a partnership is also a brilliant networking opportunity, as you can gain the chance to start making a name for yourself in the industry while collecting professional-level reviews to attract more big brand clients. It’s certainly a step that any smaller sustainable business should be taking in order to grow and flourish, so start searching for potential candidates that might be interested in your products or services on a larger scale. 

Figuring out how to market and grow your sustainable business has never been such a simple task when you can take the time to utilize some of the excellent ideas that have been carefully described above! There’s no time like the present to get started, so get out there and spread the word today. 

How Student-Led ‘Energy Audits’ Are Cutting School Costs (and Lighting the Way Forward)

By Julie Starr • July 14, 2025
What happens when students stop waiting for adults to fix things and start conducting their own energy audits? Money gets saved. The lights get switched off. Data gets analyzed. And a quiet revolution in sustainability begins—inside schools that once overlooked their own inefficiencies. Across the globe, student-led energy audits are proving that change doesn't always need to come from a policy shift or a major capital budget. Sometimes, it begins with a clipboard, a spreadsheet, and a group of curious minds asking: Why are the hallway lights on at noon when sunlight floods the building? The Energy Detectives These audits aren’t science fair projects. They’re rigorous investigations, often done in collaboration with facilities staff, local environmental nonprofits, or even engineering mentors. Students go from classroom to classroom measuring electricity usage, checking for phantom loads , and identifying where heat is escaping in winter or air conditioning is leaking in summer. One high school in Ontario saved over $12,000 a year after its Grade 11 physics students ran an energy audit and suggested simple changes—LED upgrades, motion sensors in bathrooms, and smarter heating schedules. They didn’t just propose ideas. They pitched them with spreadsheets, thermal images, and payback timelines. It worked. Learning That Pays Off—Literally Unlike textbook learning, these audits blend real-world math, environmental science, economics, and persuasive communication. Students aren’t just learning about sustainability. They’re doing it. And the savings add up. From dimming overlit hallways to reprogramming HVAC systems that run all weekend for empty buildings, students are surfacing blind spots that administrators often overlook. In some districts, their findings are influencing energy policy. Elsewhere, the audits have inspired school boards to hire sustainability coordinators—often alumni of the student programs themselves. There’s something poetic about a school funding new books or laptops from money saved by students who found out the vending machines didn’t need to be plugged in 24/7. Why This Matters More Than Ever With education budgets tightening and utility costs rising, every dollar saved is a dollar that can go back into classrooms. And here’s where it gets interesting from a family finance perspective, too. If you’re a parent setting aside money for post-secondary savings, every bit of school efficiency helps. Fewer energy costs might mean more programming, better STEM facilities, or even bursaries. That raises a broader point: when families save for their children’s future, they often look into RESPs (Registered Education Savings Plans). And many wonder—is a RESP deduction available on my taxes? While contributions themselves aren’t deductible, the gains grow tax-free, and students often pay little to no tax when they withdraw the funds during school. A Movement Worth Replicating These audits aren’t just an exercise in environmentalism. They’re leadership labs. Students learn how to spot inefficiencies, speak up in board meetings, and make a business case for change. They don’t just flip switches—they shift mindsets. And they carry these habits into adulthood. The result? A generation growing up not only with climate anxiety, but also with tools to tackle it.

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.