What Should Do if You Want To Go Paperless (but You Can’t)?

Julie Starr • June 29, 2021



Everybody is trying to make their business sustainable. And this means that when we start to think about how we can do our bit for the environment, it goes way deep into the cultural aspects of our business. But sometimes, we start to overthink matters. Because businesses need to make seismic changes through cultural components, they can easily overlook the smaller factions that can make a significant difference. Case in point: going paperless . Cutting down on the paper you use is a very simple way to help, but what happens if you try to go paperless, but you just can’t? Going digital is easy, but it’s about making sure that the paper doesn’t come back into the business. Let’s show you what you need to do. 

Surround Yourself With Similar Mindsets

The difficulty of dealing with aspects of a supply chain means that you can’t always find people that have the same mindset. But it’s important to not make massive changes right away. If you are trying to change your thinking, the best way to do this is to surround yourself and work with people who are also environmentally conscious. There are times when you may need to print things but when you do this, consider making the purchases that make the least impact. A company like Aura Print focuses on digital cards, but will always work with businesses that embody the same sort of mindset. It’s a very key component to doing business effectively. When you start to work with like-minded people, it provides you with a positive influence to keep pushing forward for constructive change. 

Forget About the Backlog

One of the best ways to consider going paperless is to forget about how much paper you’ve already accumulated. It’s so easy for us to focus on past habits when we should be looking forward. Instead of looking back, adopt a forward-thinking approach. The fact is that if you are trying to go paperless, now is the time for you to make that change. Rather than looking backward and trying to digitize all of your paper files, which can be counterintuitive, instead, make sure that the backlog doesn’t get any bigger. Sign up for digital payments and email statements. If you are a business that still sends checks on a regular basis, you’ve got to make the switch to pay online. Many companies have had digital payments for years, but there are still some who will not accept online payments. When you are dealing with certain suppliers, they may still be stuck in the 1990s, and if you find yourself in this predicament, you’ve got to explain to them that they will get their money quicker if they accept digital payments. Small businesses can accept bank transfers with minimal fees. Sometimes, when we’re working with older suppliers, they are more stubborn. However, it’s just important to remember that sometimes we have to set an example. 

Scanning and Shredding

You can start to digitize your business through a scanner, but if your business is on the small side, you may not be able to invest in an expensive scanner, however, there are plenty of smartphone apps that you can use to scan information. Once you start to scan, put the paper in the shredder. When you dispose of the paper into the shredder, you’ve done everything you can. It can be difficult to follow that habit, especially if you don’t have time, but just take the opportunity to spend five minutes per day scanning from your backlog, to see how smoothly it goes. You can always hire temporary staff to do this for you also. 

Incorporate New Workflows

Scanning and shredding your documents is one approach, but as you get more comfortable with your paperless approach, you may discover you will need more workflows. This could mean that you need to create a new content management system, especially if you need to keep information on clients, such as their business number, contact details, etc. 

It’s also important to remember that you shouldn’t overthink it. When you are facing a difficult predicament as to whether you should go paperless with certain parts of the business, it can be tough. Going paperless should make your life easier. You may feel guilty that you got a few extra pieces of paper floating around, but you need to remember that if you are holding onto pointless papers, get rid of them, but also, you shouldn’t bother digitizing papers that serve no purpose. When in doubt, shred it, and let it go. Going paperless is not always straightforward, because there are different ideologies and attitudes to going completely digital. But when you are in doubt, try a few of these methods to see how it goes.

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.