TLDR: If you’re interested in switching to sustainable alternatives for some everyday things but don’t have the time to find brands or don’t want to go through the hassle of figuring out which ones work well, there’s a list below for you to use as a starting point (tried and tested by me in the past two years).

Anyone who’s spent more than a bit of time with me knows I bother them with too many details of trying to switch to zero-waste/non-plastic alternatives for a variety of everyday things (floor cleaner, shampoo, etc…). Long story short — I figure that given the option, many people would like to switch to greener alternatives BUT don’t have the time to find brands with sustainable choices or dread the hassle of trying multiple brands before finding something that works well. If that’s you — here’s a list to get you started (certified brand recommendations from Anisha, the zero-waste guinea pig)!

Toothpaste:

Teeth-a-bit: Toothpaste tablets in a glass jar you can recycle or upcycle. I personally love the wild peppermint flavor. Note: You may need two tablet bits to brush.
Flavor to try: Wild Peppermint
Lasts: 30 days, once a day use

Spicta: If the thought of chewing toothpaste makes you gag, Spicta is an excellent alternative to toothpaste tablets. While Spicta still comes in some plastic packaging, the company has partnered with Climes. Climes helps you offset your carbon footprint (more on Climes later).
Flavor to try: Cucumber Mint
Lasts: 60 days, twice a day use

Face Wash:

No Rubbish: No Rubbish has a lot of different products, including shampoo and more, but their other products don’t agree with my hair, so I’ve contented myself with using their face wash. Wash that Face is a light, lemony, exfoliating facewash that’s great for daily use. While this brand uses plastic packaging, they will pick it up from your house once you have 7 containers and reuse them for packaging new product. Your delivery usually also comes with a plantable thank you card!
Lasts: 45 to 60 days, twice a day
Shampoo & Conditioner:

I preface this section by telling you that my hair is generally dry (owing to the many colors of the rainbow I’ve forced it to be). Different shampoos and conditioners react differently with varying hair types, so keep that in mind if you try any of the options on this list!

If you’re new to shampoo and conditioner bars, here’s a quick explanation of what they are and how to use them.

The Switch Fix: The switch fix has many different shampoo and conditioner bars for different hair types. While I tried several switch fix bars to see which worked best for my dry and damaged hair, they’re all great.
Shampoo bars to try: Acai of Relief & Magic Shrooms
Conditioner bars to try: Acai of Relief & Magic Shrooms
Lasts: 30 to 45 days, once a day

WeDo: WeDo is an International brand and is only available on Amazon. While their shampoo bar is the priciest option on this list, it lasts much longer than any other shampoo bar I’ve tried.
Lasts: 45 to 60 days, once a day

Earth Rythm: Earth Rythm has a limited number of shampoo and conditioner bars, but one conditioner, in general, worked great on my hair! I combined this with the WeDo professional shampoo bar, which worked well together.
Conditioner Bar to try: Argan & Black Castor Oil
Lasts: 30 to 45 days, once a day

Shower Gel:

If you’re like me and prefer shower gel to bar soap, this requires a little DIY, but it only takes about a minute to assemble. I searched high and wide for shower gel pods that dissolve in water or a concentrate that could be used to make diluted shower gel but with no luck. Here is the next best alternative:

Veda Oils: You can buy a transparent body wash base (packaged in Aluminium canisters you can recycle) and add essential oils for fragrance. I usually order body wash base in bulk (5kgs) at a time to conserve the shipping cost and carbon footprint.

Putting your DIY Body Wash together:

• To assemble, get a reusable bottle for your body wash and fill it halfway with the transparent body wash base.
• Then add in about 15 combined drops of one or multiple essential oils.
• Fill the bottle with more body wash almost to the top, then add another 10–15 drops of essential oil.
• Close the bottle and turn it upside down a few times to mix the oil with the body wash — and you’re done!

Lasts: 5kgs of body wash lasts about 6 months (once daily), if not more.

Shaving Blades, Toothbrushes & Cotton Swabs:

Bamboo alternatives for all the above items are a great way to reduce plastic that you might switch out or throw away often. While bamboo plants take a lot of water to survive, they’re better than plastic.

While you can usually find bamboo toothbrushes and cotton swabs really easily on Amazon or elsewhere, I combine these purchases with shaving sticks/blades as well from a cute little cafe that is local (which means I can save on shipping and pick it up on my way)

For Earth’s Sake: This cute cafe is a great place to work out of and has a whole host of zero-waste products you can ship or pick up from the store. The favorites that I re-purchase are bamboo razors, toothbrushes, biodegradable floss, and cotton swabs.

Makeup Remover Wipes:

Ditch the single-use makeup remover wipes, and opt for reusable pads instead!

Earth Rythm: There’s definitely more than one option available. Still, I like these makeup remover pads the best because they are soft on the skin and last a while before I have to wash them. Use these with micellar water (Garnier uses 100% recycled plastic — better than nothing!)
Lasts: 5–10 uses, then toss them in the machine to wash!

Trash Bags:

Most trash bags are now biodegradable, but I opt for green ones that are not only biodegradable but also compostable. These trash bags are made of plant starch that breaks down into organic substances that don’t harm the environment.

Beco: These bags are the sturdiest compostable trash bags I’ve found. Many green compostable bags exist, but most are thin, flimsy, and tear easily. These aren’t perfect either, but they are better than the alternatives.

Floor Cleaner, Toilet Cleaner, Laundry Detergent, Fabric Softener, and Room Freshener:

There are two brands that both have great options for all these everyday house cleaning products. They’re both plant-based alternatives (which don’t pollute rivers and the groundwater) and come in sustainable or refill packaging that helps you cut down on the monthly plastic waste!

Happi-Planet: Happi-Planet has a handwash, toilet cleaner, laundry detergent, and floor cleaner. All their products come in paper packaging, which you can mail back to them to recycle. They also have glass bottles to store your products, so you can use the paper packages just as refill packs and keep them in the jars. Special mention — their laundry detergent smells HEAVENLY.
Laundry Detergent Lasts: About 12–15 loads of laundry
Floor Cleaner Lasts: Depends on use
Handwash Lasts: 60–90 days
Toilet Cleaner Lasts: 45–60 days

Born Good: This is what I currently use for laundry detergent, fabric softener, air freshener, and toilet cleaner. If you don’t already have reusable jars you can use, you’re first purchase might involve buying their plastic containers, but every subsequent refill pack either comes as a concentrate in small glass bottles or foil refill packs.
Laundry Detergent Lasts: About 12–15 loads of laundry
Fabric Softener Lasts: 12–18 loads of laundry
Air Freshener Lasts: I’ll let you know when it runs out. It’s been 60 days and counting.
Toilet Cleaner Lasts: 45–60 days

Special Mention: Climes

Climes is a relatively new platform that offers carbon neutralization as a service. Climes partners with several consumer brands (like Spicta), so you can offset your carbon footprint by donating a calculated amount to an Indian eco-project. You can assign your earned ‘climes’ to different projects in the country, like a waste-to-energy project, a reforestation project, and more. You can also track all your climes and the tasks from your Climes account dashboard. Climes has also partnered with MakeMyTrip, so you can offset your air travel. You can also use their carbon footprint calculator to measure your carbon footprint.

What’s the big deal with Quantum Computers, anyway?

Quantum computers are today’s computers on steroids; imagine supercomputers that have exponentially higher computing power. A computer’s power to solve complex problems is increased with each transistor that is added to its processor; however, in a quantum computer, ‘qubits’ are the component that increases the computer’s ability to solve complex problems or handle unfathomable amounts of data. Here’s why that’s exciting — qubits have twice the computing power than today’s computers.

Complex problems that would usually take supercomputers thousands of years to solve can now take a matter of days or even minutes. Granted, technology is not quite there yet. Scientists and programmers have not yet determined how quantum computers can be scaled to outperform existing supercomputers — but they’re getting closer every year. A few companies spearheading quantum computers include IBM and Google. The latter claimed in 2019 that they managed to put together a quantum processor called Sycamore, which apparently performed a task in three minutes that would have otherwise taken supercomputers thousands of years to complete.

Quantum computers have several different applications, given their ability to handle vast amounts of live data, analyze it quickly and predict probabilities with greater accuracy. This is one of the reasons that quantum computers are the next big technology to be adopted by the financial services industry. Broadly speaking, there will be at least four major areas that quantum computing that will be used within the financial services industry: service targeting, detecting fraud, credit and risk profiling, and optimizing trade portfolios.

Service Targeting

Even in this age of hyper-personalization, marketers still often miss the mark of what it is their potential customers need or want. With the improvements made so far in AI and machine learning, and the rise of quantum computers, financial institutions will be able to increase the speed and the accuracy with which they offer the right services to the right customers. By improving conversion rates, financial organizations like commercial and investment banks can reduce their operating costs and even capital.

Fraud Detection

Currently, reports suggest that about 80% of red flags tagged by fraud detection algorithms are false positives — which result in the need for more time and resources being consumed to determine real threats. The ability of quantum computers to handle live streams of data points will greatly improve the accuracy with which fraudulent transactions can be detected and flagged.

Credit and Risk Profiling

‘Know Your Customer’ procedures can currently take anywhere up to twelve weeks. Moreover, as was apparent from the housing bubble in 2008, sometimes low probability events may occur much more commonly than predicted, and faulty credit and risk profiling may result in bad investment decisions. Quantum computers can not only provide a faster and more accurate assessment of risk but can also identify new opportunities for investments.

Trading Optimization

Investment and trading opportunities depend on the quick analysis of trading data from multiple sources, and the fast and timely execution of trades. With the power of quantum computing, trading portfolios can be optimized at a much faster rate, and trades can be executed at a fraction of the time it takes now — considerably enhancing profits and gains from investments.

Quantum computing is the next large evolution that will take place in the next few years. While it may seem like the technology is far from being operational and scaled up to use, that is not the case. Quantum computers could very well make their commercial debuts within the next five years or so. Moreover, financial institutions are already testing use cases. There’s no doubt that early adopters will find themselves much further ahead than the competition — in a class apart.

The right questions lead to the right innovations

Sometimes, innovation is usually ascribed to a Eureka moment, which is mistakenly understood as a moment when a brilliant idea suddenly presents itself to you. But let’s stop for a minute and figure out what Eureka means. This concept of a ‘Eureka’ moment is ascribed to the story of the Greek Scientist Archimedes. Archimedes had been working on a problem that had been given to him by the King. The problem was this — the King wanted to know exactly how much Gold was in his crown. As the story goes, he was so deep in thought that when he went to take a bath, he didn’t realize his bathtub was full to the brim. Upon sliding into the bathtub, a large amount of water was displaced and the answer to the problem hit Archimedes like a freight train.

The takeaway here is that Archimedes was looking for the answer to a question. The word greek word ‘Eureka’ itself translates to ‘I’ve found it.” — you can only find something when you look for it. Are we asking the right questions? The idea that disruptive technologies are sudden, or come without warning is not true.

To innovate a product or platform that creates value, we need to be asking the right questions.

Innovation is a process, not an event

Innovation cannot be an event but has to be a process if we want to foster a culture of constant improvement. The process begins, of course, with asking the right questions, identifying the need that exists in a market, and then developing an idea that is an answer to that problem. That’s just the beginning of the process, though. What comes next is the long-drawn step of engineering the idea in the best possible way.

Contrary to popular belief, the incandescent light bulb was not invented by Thomas Edison. Historians claim that there were about twenty other innovators that had been working on creating a light bulb. Edison happened to create the perfect design after not only learning from their mistakes but after going through many designs himself. One of the most famous Edison quotes reads, ‘I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work’. Engineering a platform that has value takes time and multiple iterations.

Innovation without diversity results in monochrome ideas

When there’s only one demographic or group of people working on a project, there are a lot of aspects that are going to be missing from your product. It’s even more important that there’s cultural, ethnic, gender, and educational diversity in a team working on a single product. A team that does not have diversity compromises on the uniqueness and potential of their product. The lack of an interdisciplinary approach to innovation is almost like the idea of a monochrome rainbow — it’s still a rainbow, but they’re all different shades of grey.

Innovative ideas and product need supporting innovation

Innovative ideas cannot be executed in silos. They require supporting technology, platforms, talent, and partners to be implemented or executed successfully. Moreover, innovative products that disrupt any industry probably require new business models to function. Executing new products with an old business model could diminish the potential that the product has.

Innovation is disruptive, and that’s good. But innovation can, and should be structured.

The pandemic has changed how any business interacts with its customers and staff, and while it’s true that businesses will continue to re-evaluate their software spend to ensure business continuity, working during the lockdown inherently depends on technology.

Here are a few factors to keep in mind when thinking about how you can adapt your business to thrive in a post-COVID19 world.

Innovating for new business needs

Innovating new products or features for new business needs can give you the traction and revenue you need to thrive in a post-COVID19 landscape.

Although the near future may see many statewide or nationwide lockdowns lifted, epidemiologists are cautioning that if we don’t find a vaccine or cure, countries may need to continue social distancing regulations until well into 2021 and even possibly 2022.

As a result, collaboration platforms like slack have already seen a rise in users in the past few months. Additionally, continued social distancing will force businesses to adopt tools and platforms that help create and maintain employee efficiency. Businesses might also consider a complete shift to remote working to reduce overhead costs and continue to provide their employees with increased flexibility.

Adding new features or modules to your existing product to solve these emerging problems might be exactly what you need to stay competitive.

Increased virtual connections and hyper-personalization

With more people moving their interactions, businesses, and other processes online, SaaS businesses need to increase the quality and quantity of their virtual connections. Websites and online advertising are even more important ways to reach potential customers than they already were, and there’s no doubt that your competitors are going to be ramping up their online reach.

So how do you cut through the increased noise and stand out?

Increased online activity is going to lead to increased consumer data, and B2B SaaS businesses need to record, analyze and leverage this data to build hyper-personalized online experiences, content, and communication channels to scale personal one-on-one relationships with their potential customers.

Changing buyer personas and behavior

There’s no doubt that there is already a shift occurring in consumer behavior. Motivations, goals, and priorities of businesses, and consumers will continue to change as we change our definitions of normal life.

The travel and hospitality industry has been one of the hardest-hit sectors as a result of the pandemic. It’s no surprise that consumers are not buying air tickets, booking hotels, or planning their next vacation.

But what are they doing instead?

Major world events always see a shift in consumer behavior. Post 9/11, restaurant sales decreased, while sales of comfort foods and cooking ingredients increased. People stayed home and cooked familiar and comforting food like macaroni and cheese.

The only way to get ahead of the curve is to track and analyze consumer behavior data and watch for new trends and patterns. Data is going to be key to understanding the new realities and needs of businesses.

While it’s possible that the world we knew is not going to return to normal for some time, B2B SaaS businesses need to use this time to reinvent themselves for the next normal, so they can continue to innovate and thrive through a global economic crisis.