Living A More Life Sustainable When Working From Home

Julie Starr • April 22, 2022



Working from home provides numerous advantages in terms of environmental sustainability. Because they are not required to commute, remote employees have lower carbon footprints. Thankfully, while working from home, there are a plethora of other ways to lessen your environmental effect. So many people are choosing to still work from home and even by just doing that you are being more sustainable by not having to commute every day and using your car or the bus to get to work. It’s a good start and businesses do want to show they are being more gree n but there are other things you can do like the below.

By turning your thermostat up 2 degrees in the summer and down 2 degrees in the winter, you can save up to 2,000 pounds of CO2 every year! Alternatively, an energy-saving thermostat that conserves electricity automatically could be used. This 24 BTU Mr Cool combo unit can cool and heat 1000 square feet. 

Make use of environmentally friendly office supplies.  Did you know that the average office worker produces approximately 2 pounds of garbage each day? Fortunately, today’s products can assist us in increasing our productivity. The key is to choose either waste-free or biodegradable office supplies. Using paperless notebooks, for example, is an option that you may become used to and like.

Another way to be sustainable is with how you take notes. Every office worker requires a nice pen. Plastic pens, on the other hand, can be harmful to the environment if they are discarded. More environmentally friendly are biodegradable pens created from recyclable materials.

Unplug as many devices as possible. When electronic equipment is plugged in but not in use, they use energy. Everything that is plugged in uses electricity from the grid, putting undue strain on the environment. “Vampire Energy” is the term for this phenomenon. Start by unplugging electrical gadgets that aren’t in use while working from home to increase sustainability. When you aren’t using something, such as your cell phone, laptop, coffee maker, microwave, or television, disconnect it. Even lowering the brightness on your computer monitor can save up to 20% of the energy used by the monitor. 

Less energy means less environmental stress! When not in use, always turn off standby or switch off at the wall. Use timer switches or plug-in remote-controlled sockets to turn off computers and printers, TVs, and gaming consoles overnight if sockets are difficult to reach or you’re prone to forget. LED light bulbs should be used to replace inefficient lighting, and lights should be turned off when not in use. Time spent in front of the screen should be limited. Because video streaming, emails, and online searches all have a carbon impact, taking a break from them will also save you energy. Look for energy-efficient models and use their eco settings when buying or updating electronic items

Bamboo Office Products are an option to consider. 

It’s critical to use office supplies that keep you comfortable, productive, and well-organized. However, many office products are made of plastic or other environmentally harmful materials. The environment should use bamboo-based items. Bamboo, for example, decomposes faster than plastic while remaining just as strong.

To save energy and avoid waste, eat well. Every year, average homes throw away 4.5 million tonnes of food, and while some food packaging can be recycled, many plastics and mixed materials will wind up in landfills or be burnt. With more people eating three meals a day at home and sipping endless cups of tea and coffee, reducing food and packaging waste is more vital than ever. Make lunch out of leftovers. If you work from home, a small number of leftovers that might otherwise go to waste makes an excellent quick lunch. Make a grocery list and plan meals ahead of time, including weekday lunches, to make it easy to buy only what you need and prevent wasting food.

Use the eco setting and fill the dishwasher. To save water and energy when washing dishes by hand, use a bowl and do it once a day rather than after each meal. Turn off the standby mode. Microwaves, dishwashers, washing machines, and ovens may all be turned off at the mains, but the fridge and freezer must remain on all the time. When making hot drinks, don’t overfill the kettle; only boil as much as you’ll need or fill a flask to last all day. Choose plastic-free tea bags and coffee pods if you use them. When possible, utilize energy-saving appliances such as a slow cooker, pressure cooker, or microwave instead of an oven.

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.