How You Can Encourage Your Industry to Follow Your Sustinable Lead

Julie Starr • September 9, 2021



You may have already taken steps to make each department greener within your business, but the journey towards a more sustainable future does not start and finish at your company alone. If you want to make sustainable practices the norm, these practices must spread throughout your entire industry – and beyond. 

This is, of course, much easier said than achieved. You are only in control of your company . You do not have a stake in your competitors or even startups that want to offer an alternative to established corporations. While this can be a challenge, perhaps there are ways to make it a reality.  

Why Should It Be You? 

The big question is why should it be you ? Why of all people should your business be the one to lead the way, where others are perhaps more responsible for promoting unsustainable practices. 

The simple answer is that if not you, then who? You cannot rely on other businesses to take the lead when they might be satisfied doing things the way they always have done. If your brand has a passion for sustainability and an eco-friendly approach to running a business and providing a service, you should be the one to take the lead. 

There is the chance this will be met with some pushback, but this is something you should expect. You know by now that telling gets you nowhere. Instead, it is up to you to show how a sustainable approach to business is the best way to stay up to date with modern consumer trends and ensure your industry thrives. 

Show Them The Wider Benefits 

No one is expecting you to waltz into competitor offices and convince them that sustainability is the way forward. At best, they might humor you before asking you politely to leave. At worst, you may be kicked out before you have a chance to state your case. 

Instead, you must demonstrate the wider benefits of why sustainability is the only option for the next generation of business. One key factor that should prick up some ears and turn heads is how it can help attract young consumers . The current and future generation of customers wants to entertain businesses that emphasize eco-friendly practices, even if it means paying a little more. 

Give Them Alternatives

Changing your business operations will not happen in a day. It is unlikely to happen in a week. But, offering alternatives to businesses with your industry can make it easier for them to envision a future where sustainability is a top priority. 

Identifying popular locations to increase their companies’ scope or even working together to create co-working spaces that cut down on travel, electricity, and occupied office space may not seem possible right now, but it is something to consider for the future when making changes. 

Your competitors will not want you to come to them with mere problems. They want solutions as well. If you have these solutions, your argument will be much stronger. 

Set The Tone

It’s no secret that businesses study one another. This is not to steal ideas but rather to understand what you are doing and perhaps fund an alternative to get ahead of the competition. 

When focusing on sustainability, your business must set the tone, even if any industry please have fallen – for now – on deaf ears. Demonstrating that your sustainability pledge works will go a long way towards convincing the rest of your industry to make the changes that will benefit the planet and encourage healthy competition that will make everyone better. 

Offer Collaboration Opportunities 

Big brands often focus solely on themselves, and the idea of collaborative marketing is not something you see very often, at least not for companies in the same industry. 

However, sustainability is bigger than any competition, and failing to make beneficial changes will affect the entire industry. It can be challenging to shed the stigma that your industry is not dedicated to helping the planet. So, offering to work together to find sustainable solutions for everyday business operations will help everyone. It will show consumers that the entire industry is committed to updating their approach, shifting the opinion that allows your industry to thrive. 

Leading the Way 

The modern consumer, particularly the younger generation, will look for companies that share their views on sustainability. Therefore, you must take steps that encourage others to lead the way. Even industries that are set in their ways will soon see the benefit of sustainable emphasis, which will help normalize the idea of an eco-friendly industry for a brighter and healthier future.

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.