The Sustainability Of Remote Business

Julie Starr • May 20, 2020



A lot of businesses have had to live, at some scale, with remote working as a reality rather than an option. However, it has shown many businesses the benefits of going remote, not just for the productivity and work-life balance of the team, but also for the sustainability of the business. Here are four key ways in which a remote team could be a more sustainable one.

Cutting the commute
While some remote workers might be considered “digital nomads,” and are constantly on the move, this isn’t the case for most remote workers. In fact, most people working remotely will do so from their home, meaning they lose all the environmental impact of traveling back and forth from the office every single day. To see how much your business could help cut the carbon emissions of your team, there are commute emission tracking websites made to precisely that purpose. You can see just how much greener your business could be by cutting the commute alone.

Downsizing the office
There are a lot of ways that an employer can help make their office a greener place. However, the fact is that such a concentration of resources and people is likely to be a place where a lot of waste is generated. With remote working, you don’t have the waste of the office to deal with. You can still maintain the professional image your business needs with a virtual physical address , too, if you’re worried about how not having an office would impact your business. Similarly, without an office, you don’t need to purchase all the technology to equip your workers to do their job there, either. In a remote set-up, most employees will work with their own tech.

Passing on the paper
 One of the resources you’re going to cut down most on when going remote is the amount of paper purchased and used. Going paperless is one of the biggest steps an office can take towards going sustainable. In the average office, it’s estimated that 70% of all the waste produced is mixed paper products. As recyclable as it is, not all of it will be able to be reused and when the average office goes through about 2 pounds worth of mixed paper a day, the remote paperless option can be a huge improvement.

Empowering remote employees
 The one potential disadvantage of going remote in your business is that you don’t have the ability to influence the environment of your workers or to get them to work in a more sustainable workspace. At least, you don’t have that option directly. You can, however, incentivize them to make their own home office a little greener . For instance, you can introduce a scheme by where they can purchase some green home installations, like LED bulbs, at a discount through the company.

Another great way to empower your employees to lead the way to sustainability while working from home is to create sustainability programs. It is common for companies to have multiple employee programs that are voluntary; however, if you want to achieve sustainability, consider having a program related to this and making it mandatory for all employees to participate.

Including your workers regardless of location is an incredible way to ensure everyone is on board and adheres to measures. Also, ensure you enact the proper communication channels for employees to air out their views, get assistance and advice where need be, and suggest better methods.

Lastly, to empower your employees effectively, it would be wise to reward all efforts. Nothing is as great as celebrating success, no matter how trivial it is, by rewarding efforts. It can be as simple as sending out business thank you cards to anyone who promoted sustainability, be it your employees, sponsors, or community members. You can also give the requisite recognition honors to participants.

From cutting the carbon emissions of traveling to reducing paper use as best as possible, it’s clear that remote working could be the future of the sustainable office as we know it.

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.