Insights explored in this article:
- Continuous monitoring helps organizations optimize inventory, recover reusable assets, prevent product loss, and avoid unnecessary production
- Battery-free Bluetooth® tags provide continuous visibility into assets and goods, allowing organizations to make decisions based on actual conditions rather than assumptions
- Combining Bluetooth connectivity with battery-free sensing technologies helps organizations reduce maintenance demands, avoid battery waste, and deploy sensing at larger scales
Across industries, organizations are under increasing pressure to reduce waste, improve resource utilization, and lower emissions. While sustainability strategies often focus on energy efficiency, renewable resources, or circular business models, visibility is just as important and frequently receives less attention.
Whether managing food moving through a cold chain, reusable assets traveling across logistics networks, or inventory spread throughout warehouses and retail environments, facility managers often lack the real-time information needed to make the best decisions. As a result, uncertainty can drive unnecessary waste, inefficiencies, and avoidable resource consumption.
Bluetooth® technology is increasingly being deployed to help address this challenge. When paired with battery-free sensing, Bluetooth tags can deliver continuous visibility into products, assets, and environmental conditions without the maintenance burdens traditionally associated with connected devices.
Sustainability requires visibility
Many sustainability challenges are ultimately rooted in a lack of information about what is happening in the physical world. Facility managers often know what enters and exits their operations but have limited understanding of what happens in between; unintentionally created waste can happen when they are forced to make decisions with incomplete information.
“One of the biggest challenges is reducing waste without compromising operational performance,” said Giampaolo Marino, chief strategy and growth officer at Energous. “This is especially true in supply chain, retail, cold chain, and logistics environments. If a product’s temperature history is unclear, if inventory location is uncertain, or if asset conditions are only checked manually and periodically, organizations are often forced to make conservative decisions. That can lead to unnecessary disposal, excess inventory, spoilage, additional shipments, and avoidable labor.”
How Bluetooth can help
Improving visibility requires a technology capable of connecting products, assets, and infrastructure at scale. Bluetooth® technology is well suited for that role; it is already deployed globally, supported by billions of devices, and designed for efficient wireless communication. Facilities can therefore leverage existing infrastructure rather than building entirely new networks.
Low-power Bluetooth devices can collect location positioning from assets, temperature data from cold-chain shipments, inventory movement data, environmental information from facilities and warehouses, and more, moving that data into enterprise systems where decisions are made. “Bluetooth has become one of the most pervasive wireless standards on the planet, making it an ideal foundation for connecting billions of physical things,” said Amir Khoshniyati, vice president of Wiliot. “Combined with battery-free sensing, Bluetooth® connectivity transforms products into intelligent digital assets that continuously communicate without requiring manual scans or battery maintenance.”
That ability to connect physical assets to digital intelligence systems becomes even more valuable as facility managers seek to automate operations, improve efficiency, and support sustainability initiatives through data-driven decision making. “Bluetooth® connections are like the tendons connecting the muscle and intelligence of AI and cloud computing to the bones of the physical world of places, products, and other assets,” said Steve Statler, CEO of ambientChat.AI.
Bluetooth® connections are like the tendons connecting the muscle and intelligence of AI and cloud computing to the bones of the physical world of places, products, and other assets.
Steve Statler, ambientChat.AI
Eliminating battery management
Traditional connected devices rely on batteries that must be monitored, replaced, and eventually disposed of. While manageable in small deployments, battery maintenance can become a burden when operations begin to scale up.
“Batteries make the IoT possible in many settings, but when organizations scale to thousands or tens of thousands of devices, battery replacement becomes a sustainability and operational issue,” said Marino. “It introduces labor, downtime, materials, disposal, and data gaps when devices stop reporting.”
Battery-free sensing innovations offer an alternative model. Combining Bluetooth® enabled sensing with RF-based wireless power can reduce or, in some deployments, eliminate the need for batteries.
“When paired with battery-free technologies, organizations can monitor assets continuously without creating battery waste or ongoing maintenance requirements,” said Khoshniyati. “That combination allows intelligence to scale to billions of products in ways that weren’t previously economically possible.”
Turning visibility into resource efficiency
The value of battery-free Bluetooth® tags lies not only in low-power wireless connectivity but also in the insight that connectivity provides. When operations managers have continuous access to information about product location, condition, movement, and environmental status, they can use resources more efficiently and reduce unnecessary waste. This allows facilities to improve inventory accuracy, monitor assets more effectively, and identify operational issues sooner.
“When organizations know exactly where products are and their condition, they avoid overproduction, reduce unnecessary safety stock, prevent spoilage, recover reusable assets faster, and make smarter replenishment choices,” said Khoshniyati. “Waste often comes from uncertainty. Visibility removes that uncertainty.”
Marino reinforces this point, noting that organizations frequently overcorrect when they lack information. “Better visibility allows operations to make decisions based on actual conditions rather than assumptions, helping reduce waste while improving operational performance.”
When organizations know exactly where products are and their condition, they avoid overproduction, reduce unnecessary safety stock, prevent spoilage, recover reusable assets faster, and make smarter replenishment choices. Waste often comes from uncertainty. Visibility removes that uncertainty.
Amir Khoshniyati, Wiliot
Reducing food waste through cold-chain monitoring
Perishable products often travel through complex supply chains that involve multiple handoffs, facilities, and transportation stages. When temperature histories are incomplete or unavailable, operations managers may choose to dispose of products as a precaution. “Perishable goods are often discarded not because there is clear evidence they were compromised, but because of gaps in data,” said Marino. “Bluetooth® tags help close these gaps by communicating temperature and location data as goods move through a facility or supply-chain environment.”
Continuous monitoring can help reduce unnecessary waste while also supporting food safety, operational efficiency, and product quality. “By continuously monitoring the temperature and movement of perishable products, organizations can identify excursions before products spoil,” said Khoshniyati. “Instead of discarding entire shipments as a precaution, they can make informed decisions based on actual product conditions.”
Once facility managers can observe what is happening in real time, they can take corrective action before waste occurs. “One of the largest grocery chains in the world is now using battery-free Bluetooth® tags to monitor pallets in transit between their distribution centers and stores,” said Statler. “The retailer found they were freezing and defrosting strawberries half a dozen times between the distribution center and the store. This impacted shelf life, created waste, and made for a product that was harder to sell when it arrived and was more likely to go bad quickly if it was bought. Putting Bluetooth® tags on crates, pallets, and rolling cages is like turning the lights on in a supply chain and opens up savings that can help minimize waste.”
Avoiding unnecessary production
According to Statler, Royal Mail deployed battery-free Bluetooth® tags on rolling cages used throughout its logistics network. Before implementing tracking, Royal Mail had limited visibility into these reusable assets.
“By tracking the cages in real time, Royal Mail found that they had almost 30 percent more cages than they estimated they had prior to the tracking system,” said Statler. “They went from an estimated 700,000 cages to finding another 200,000. This rapidly accelerated the project’s break-even time because Royal Mail was able to eliminate purchases of millions of pounds’ worth of these reusable assets. Avoiding those purchases eliminated associated manufacturing-related emissions, roughly 20,000 tonnes of CO2e.”
Building a more sustainable future
Sustainability and visibility are becoming increasingly intertwined. Facilities cannot reduce waste, improve resource use, or optimize operations if they lack accurate information. Bluetooth® technology provides a scalable and widely adopted foundation for collecting that data. Battery-free sensing extends those initiatives further by reducing maintenance demands and minimizing dependence on batteries.
Together, these technologies help operations transform uncertainty into actionable insight. By improving visibility into products, assets, and environmental conditions, battery-free Bluetooth tags are enabling facility managers to make smarter decisions, reduce waste, improve operational efficiency, and advance sustainability initiatives simultaneously.
