How Technology can Support Sustainability
Nowadays, the word on everyone’s lips is sustainability, which goes for businesses and households as people look for ways to protect the environment in the long term without sacrificing productivity, convenience, or comfort. Once again, technology may have an answer.
Integrated Technology
Integrated technologies are becoming more and more commonplace; one stand-out example in the Internet of Things that creates an integrated home or office environment, for example. Physical objects such as kitchen appliances, vehicles, and fitness devices are interconnected.
So how does this help sustainability practices ? For one thing, it helps to cut down on energy wastage; if you can program all of your devices and appliances to switch on and off at the right times, you reduce your impact on the planet without sacrificing any of your overall convenience.
Energy Storage
Many of the sustainability issues that we face come down to energy. We need energy for the world to operate, but how we create and store the energy is a point of contention. Fossil fuels, the energy that once drove the economy to new heights, is no longer viable or responsible.
The only way forward is to develop alternative energy solutions such as solar and wind power, but while this is sustainable to produce, it is also difficult to store in conventional batteries. That’s why new batteries are being developed, like the Tesla Powerwall, a viable option.
Data Analytics
If you can monitor and track information about the way customers respond and behave when interacting with your company, it’s possible to generate insights and create projections that allow a business to optimize its performance. This is the task of data analytics and digital charts.
Software for Process Behavior Charts is one way of doing this; with PBCharts, you can make your business processes simpler and more streamlined simply by measuring the nature of certain metrics and variations and adapting your business to perform more sustainably in the future.
Food Technology
It is not just fossil fuels from industry the contribute to the greenhouse gas effect; human food consumption is responsible for around 14.5% of emissions. By lowering food emissions from humans, we can reduce the planet’s carbon footprint and create a more ethical diet for people.
One of the best ways of doing this is to cancel meat from your diet and choose a plant-based diet instead. While this is realistic for some people, it is not for others; many people refuse to give up on meat. However, there is an alternative as technology develops non-animal meat.
Alternative Energy
In the last five years, solar panels have become more efficient and affordable than ever before. Solar panels are no longer just for industries ; they are a viable option for households as well backed by government incentives and the possibility of selling excess power back to the grid.
As with battery technology, solar cells are becoming better and cheaper, which is good news for government climate targets. It’s not realistic to supply your home partly or completely with power from solar panels, and while they might have higher upfront costs, they are cheap long term.
