Is Working From Home More Sustainable?

Julie Starr • November 12, 2021



The work-from-home revolution has well and truly begun. The people leading the charge for shifting towards a totally work-from-home state will often cite many of its supposed benefits. Amongst the advantages listed, there will always be claims of it being more sustainable and eco-friendly than working in an office. 

What we’re interested in is getting to the truth of the matter. Is this actually an accurate statement? Is it better for the sustainability of your business to have everyone working remotely, rather than all coming to an office? Let’s look at the main arguments and points…

No commute

One of the biggest reasons people say working from home is better for the environment is that it removes the need for commuting . Picture a world in which nobody commuted to the office every day – think about how many carbon emissions would no longer be released into the atmosphere. In all honesty, there are no arguments against this point. Yes, working from home will reduce your carbon footprint by making you drive less. The impact can be considerable if you have employees living over an hour away from the office – that’s over two hours of commuting ripped to shreds each day, equating to ten hours a week or forty hours a month. Think about how many carbon fumes this prevents!

Yes, you can argue that employees traveling to work in electric vehicles or via bikes won’t create carbon emissions anyway. However, it’s pretty hard to guarantee or enforce a rule where people can only commute these ways. 

Lower energy consumption

Another argument is that less energy is consumed when working from home, compared to being in an office. Again, this can be an accurate claim. There have been studies that show that – in the majority of cases – working from home can cut energy use . It’s because you use fewer devices when everyone is working from home, and you can also call upon everyone’s individual energy consumption. For example, you have no need to power a whole room full of computers or servers in an office. Instead, each individual has their own device at home – which might have eco-friendly settings to use up even less energy. 

Not only that, but you have to take things like lighting into account as well. In an office, you’ll probably light the entire space for the entirety of the day. Even with efficient lighting, that equates to a lot of energy being consumed throughout the week. At home, you only need to light the space you’re working in. Thankfully, nobody needs a lot of space at home anyway! Think about it, everything you could possibly need is all on one device. You can access your accounting software, marketing software, employee recognition software , HR software, and so on. All you need is a small space to work at a desk – which can be in your bedroom, kitchen, or home office. This means the rest of your home can remain in darkness during the day, reducing energy consumption. 

What about winter energy consumption?

At this point, everything looks great. Working from home is surely more sustainable as you use less energy and cut down on commutes. However, things get a bit harder in the winter. There has been research that suggests working from home uses more energy in the winter months because of heating demands. Energy consumption referring to your devices and lighting doesn’t change, but you use more energy when heating your home. 

It’s believed that this is down to the heating systems in homes and offices. With an office, you have a more sophisticated system that’s designed to heat your office space as efficiently as possible. You also have the benefit of being part of a larger building, meaning you get more heat from other offices around you. When everyone works from home, you have each individual home using their heating system to stay warm. It can mean that more energy is used throughout winter, making working from home less sustainable than you initially thing. 

Nevertheless, in conclusion, you should view working from home as a better solution for the environment. The only issue is the winter cold snap, but you can find ways around this. For instance, introduce flexible working where people come to the office for a few days per week in the winter. Or, educate your employees on how to cut their energy consumption at home when it gets cold. The bottom line is that, over the course of 12 months, working from home will be more sustainable. It’s just that you should be aware and more conscious of your energy consumption at home when it gets cold.

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.