How Your Ability As A Manager Affects Your Business’s Sustainability

Julie Starr • May 21, 2020



Sustainability, to put it simply, is all about making the best use of the resources at your disposal, avoiding waste when possible, and re-using what you can. Aside from paper, carbon, water, and the like, you can think of your employees as a resource, too. They’re a resource that, when engaged, can help make the company a lot more sustainable. But how, exactly, do you empower them to achieve that? Here are just a few ways you can make better use of the employees in your team to make a more sustainable business.

Make it a core part of your messaging

First of all, you need to make sure that you’re not being shy about your company’s dedication to sustainability. Your entire team should be aware of the fact that you are committed to reducing waste and managing your impact on the environment. As such, you should learn how to communicate your company values often and loudly. This can include putting the words in writing, such as in job postings, in employee meetings, in strategy forecasts, and more. Not only can this put those values in the back of your employees’ minds, but it means you’re also more likely to attract like-minded people who will actively participate in efforts to make the business more sustainable.

Get everyone talking about it

As a business with a social media platform, you have the opportunity to spread not only your marketing messages but also your commitment to green causes through the internet and to a potentially huge number of followers. However, instead of taking care of this by yourself or leaving it only to the marketing team, you can involve people from all roles of the organization . By getting all of your employees to post about what they are doing to be more sustainable, such as through a series of blog posts, then you get everyone a lot more engaged about what they’re going to say and, in response, what they are going to do to be more sustainable.

Make efficient use of your manpower

Now, you’re going to need to have people in the workplace to get stuff done. But are you going to need as many people as you usually do? Remote working is on the rise, and allowing people to stay home can reduce the resources they use on the commute, not to mention the amount of equipment and energy you need to power the office. Employee scheduling software can make sure you never schedule too many people to come into the office and allows you to see when employees can work from home instead. Remote working is becoming a lot more popular in the business world and sustainability is just another reason why.

Take the time to inform them

The vast majority of people are aware of the need for sustainable business practices and the general reasons as to why we should reduce waste. However, if you want your employees to be both more engaged in your existing sustainability efforts and better equipped to contribute to brainstorming such tactics in the future, then you should take the time to have educational talks on specific kinds of waste and the benefits of particular sustainability efforts. By turning the vague concept into more concrete facts, you can make sure that your sustainability goals do not remain nebulous for too long.

Make your case for the company

You can’t simply drill a value into the heads of your employees. Either they are on side or they aren’t. Some people are going to be motivated enough by the shared desire to do good for the environment. However, some people aren’t going to be as motivated by that. If those people are generally invested in the performance of the company, however, then talking to them about how it may affect profitability can be a much better strategy. When outlining your sustainability goals, take the time to make the economic case for sustainability . Tell them how it will benefit the business and they will be more likely to support whatever measures you are taking. After all, the better the company does, the more potential in their own career there.

Give them the room to engage with sustainable practices

If you want to incentivize people to act in a certain way, then making it easier to do so and rewarding them when they do can be a great way to go about it. For instance, if you’re encouraging employees to work remotely, then you can also offer them a discount through the company accounts on things like LED lights that can make working from home more energy-saving. Otherwise, you can also use employee reward systems to encourage things like getting involved in sustainable causes during their downtime. To some people, they would like to be more engaged in sustainable practices, but they don’t have enough practical reasons.

 

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.