How To Plan A Sustainable Event That Doesn’t Break The Bank

Julie Starr • June 29, 2022



What is the average cost of running an in-person business event? For small companies, a business event can be a significant burden on the corporate budget, as they will need to consider the costs of:

  • hiring the venue
  • catering for guests and staff
  • entertainment
  • marketing
  • furniture and decor
  • transportation (not just staff but also equipment, which may require specialist transport)
  • staff wages
  • registration 
  • lodging when relevant

At the best of times, it can cost anything between $20,000 and $75,000 to hold a two-day event where you can interact with your audience. When you wish to make it a sustainable event, you will also need to consider strategies that will reduce waste. As the typical event attendee can produce up to 2kg of waste per day at an event, it can be tricky to keep both expenses and waste low. So, how can a small company throw an engaging and eco-friendly in-person event when working on a shoe-string budget? 

Focus on local suppliers

Local suppliers can prevent multiple advantages. First of all, when it comes to sustainability, local businesses will keep their carbon footprint low as they do not require intensive transportation solutions. 

They are also less likely to charge extra. Indeed, transportation, additional staff, and overnight services can rapidly double or even triple your costs. But when the supplier is local to the venue, they do not need to increase their fees. Even if you need the supplier to provide extra staff, such as to help with specialist equipment setup or service, staff will only be present when needed. This could mean having someone with you to serve food at lunchtime or to install professional gadgets in-situ, which is unlikely to require more than a couple of hours during the day. 

Can suppliers make it cheaper? 

While local suppliers will save you costs, it doesn’t necessarily mean that event planning will be more affordable. When costs remain a source of problems, it can be worth getting in touch with your suppliers to discuss your options. Learning effective negotiation skills from a training place as prestigious as Karrass could equip you with the tactics and strategies you need to shave off some fees from the final bill. 

Ideally, you want to provide a fair exchange rather than asking for a discount. For example, suppliers may be willing to consider a reduced price if:

  • They can promote their services on site
  • They enter a long-term agreement to cover your future events
  • You introduce new clients to them 

Can you remove unnecessary services?

A minimalist business event can help you stick to your budget and reduce waste. So, it may be a good idea to make a list of the potential services and items that can both increase waste and costs:

  • Packed snacks and treats for your visitors
  • Plastic bottles
  • Multiple screens on a small surface
  • Pens and paper
  • Gimmicks and giveaways for your visitors
  • Paper brochures, flyers, magazines, etc. 
  • Exciting furniture such as sofa, massage chair, etc. 

More often than not, opting for simple furniture, communal catering, and minimal decor will save you logistic hassle and costs while keeping your carbon footprint low. 

Hopefully, these few ideas can give you some direction to make in-person events less harmful to the environment and the company finances. More is not always the best option when less can get the job done! 

 

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.