Tag Archives: great

Why Is Flying so Cheap?

by CasimiraCollie7 Posted on May 13, 2016

Sploid titles a postWhat the Heck Makes Flying So Expensive?I looked at it and thought, really? What the heck makes flying so cheap? I am going to New York City next month and wanted to take the train, but it is $167 one way, takes 14 hours and requires an extra night in a hotel. Flying in a Q400 turboprop takes 90 minutes and costs $115; going by jet costs $138. Who said flying was expensive?

In fact, as this great video shows at the end, flying is cheaper than ever,half of what it cost thirty years ago, when they were already flying jumbo jets.

The Atlantic

There are all kinds of reasons; the planes are more efficient, they pack more people in, they provide fewer services and they treat everything from food to baggage handling as an extra cost now. In fact, according to Sploid,

Even though giant passenger jets do guzzle down fuel at a ridiculous 0.67 miles per gallonseriously, they need 1.5 gallons of jet fuel for every mile traveledthere are so many people on an airplane that the fuel cost gets split down to a much more reasonable price: a per-person fuel efficiency of 104.7 miles per gallon. Thats good! So why is flying so expensive? Its everything else.

By that they mean the taxes, security, airport fees, the cost of the planes and the crews on them. It is a fascinating video, that does make the point at the end that flying is pretty much cheaper than it has ever been. And if I thought I was reducing my carbon footprint by taking the train, I am probably wrong; this graph shows the comparative fuel economies, but assumes the train is full; the last time I was on the run to New York it was not even close.

Of course the graph doesn’t show the true picture; asMike has noted earlier, people travel much longer distances by plane, and there is the “radiative forcing ratio” where the warming effect from aircraft emissions are more dire than carbon dioxide emissions at grade. But still, it surprises. And for my trip to New York City,flying turboprop(which uses 64% of the fuel of a jet) turns out to be the greenest way that I can go.

We used to quote George Monbiot a lot, when he saidFlying is dying.But until we are all driving Teslas or getting sucked through Hyperloops, it may well be the best way to go.

Written by Lloyd Alter. Reposted with permission from TreeHugger.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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Why Is Flying so Cheap?

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Suicide Rates Are Up, But the Most Obvious Explanations Are Probably All Wrong

by LaureneT40 Posted on April 23, 2016

Mother Jones

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The CDC reports that the suicide rate was up again in 2014, and the Washington Post immediately offers some possible reasons. I’ve added numbers for easy reference:

(1) Last decade’s severe recession, (2) more drug addiction, (3) “gray divorce,” (4) increased social isolation, and even (5) the rise of the Internet and social media may have contributed to the growth in suicide, according to a variety of people who study the issue.

But (6) economic distress — and dashed hopes generally — may underpin some of the increase, particularly for middle-aged white people. The data showed a 1 percent annual increase in suicide between 1999 and 2006 but a 2 percent yearly hike after that, as the economy deteriorated, unemployment skyrocketed and millions lost their homes.

David French comments:

There’s much more to say about this, but millions of our fellow citizens — friends and neighbors — are experiencing existential crises that are far beyond the ability of politics to solve. With civil society faltering, families fracturing, and millions of Americans “bowling alone,” the human toll will only continue to rise. God forgive our nation for believing we could build a culture without you.

Let’s slow down a bit. The causes of suicide are complex, and correlations are hard to prove. Still, there are a couple of things we can say. First, there should at least be a correlation if you’re claiming causation, and second, the purported cause had better come first. You can’t blame increased suicide on things that didn’t happen until years later.

With that in mind, let’s look at recent suicide rates for men. Not only does this help us control for gender, but it’s also a less noisy set of data since men commit suicide at nearly 4x the rate of women. It turns out that suicide rates barely budged between 1999-2005, so I’m going to look only at 2005-14. The chart is on the right, with suicide rates divided into three 3-year buckets. Here are some things we can say based on this and other data in the CDC report:

The Great Recession (and economic distress more generally) doesn’t really fit the facts. The suicide rate went up the most from 2005-2008, before the Great Recession. It went up the least from 2011-14. But if prolonged economic distress was at fault, you’d expect just the opposite: no effect before the recession and the greatest effect after it had been grinding away for a couple of years with no relief in sight.
Drug addiction is more plausible—but only modestly. According to HHS, marijuana use is up since 2005, but that’s an unlikely cause of suicide. Cocaine, hallucinogen, and illicit prescription drug use is down. Heroin use and heroin dependence are up. Overdose deaths among heroin and prescription opioid users are also up—but they’ve been rising since 2002 and it’s unclear how many of these deaths are suicides anyway. More generally, overall drug addiction rates have waxed and waned over the past five decades, and it’s difficult to tease out a correlation between addiction and suicide rates over the long term.
“Gray divorce” has been a thing since the 80s, well before the suicide rate started rising. It hit the mainstream in early 2007 with the publication of Calling It Quits, also before the suicide rate started rising. What’s more, suicide rates have been flat among the elderly since 1999. It’s other age groups that have seen an increase. This is unlikely to be more than a minuscule cause at most.
Increased social isolation could be a cause, but the 2006 paper that kicked off this discussion suggested only that Americans had become more isolated between 1985 and 2004. This corresponds to a period when suicide was declining or flat. What’s more, a 2009 Pew study that replicated the 2006 research found a substantially smaller—possibly zero—effect.
Internet and social media could also be a cause, though I don’t really see what the mechanism is supposed to be. And that 2009 Pew study found that internet and cell phone users were less isolated than others.

We also know that suicide is up only among whites and Native Americans, but not among Hispanics or African-Americans. So any theory about the rise of suicide needs to at least engage with what might cause this. Are whites more economically distressed than blacks? That seems distinctly unlikely. Do they have higher drug addiction rates? Higher social isolation? More family fracturing? Maybe, but I’d like to see the evidence. And what about overall life satisfaction rates? They seem to have been quite stable over the past few decades. This doesn’t suggest that growing existential angst is the cause.

My point here is not really that the increase in suicide rates can’t possibly be due to any of these things. A deeper dive might implicate any of them. What’s more, a lot of these possible causes affect a lot of people. But although suicide has seen a large percentage increase since 2005, in absolute terms it’s only gone up by about 1000 per year. That’s a small number, which makes it really hard to tease out from large-scale effects. A mere 1 percent change in the Gallup life satisfaction index, for example, represents a couple of million people, so it’s unlikely to give us much insight into relatively tiny changes in the suicide rate.

So what is my point? Just this: writers need to be careful not to casually project their own sentiments or guesses onto a topic like this. Sure, the Great Recession might be the cause of more suicides. Maybe existential crises and fracturing families are the cause. Opioid abuse could be a factor. But just because these all seem plausible doesn’t mean they’re true. Likewise, just because you personally don’t like the direction of American culture doesn’t mean they’re true either—no matter how true they seem. None of them should be tossed out casually.

For my money, we flatly don’t know what’s causing the increase in suicides over the past decade. Based on the size of the numbers and the evidence at hand, if you put a gun to my head I’d probably guess opioid abuse was the biggest cause. But I don’t know, and I’m not sure anyone else knows either.

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Suicide Rates Are Up, But the Most Obvious Explanations Are Probably All Wrong

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Tiny island nations aren’t just going to drown. First they’re going to dry out.

by LashayWorden Posted on April 11, 2016

Tiny island nations aren’t just going to drown. First they’re going to dry out.

By on 11 Apr 2016commentsShare

In what can only be a sign that scientists have finally lost their minds in the face of climate change, a group of researchers have just declared that islands are “computationally disenfranchised” freckles that a blind pig couldn’t find. If you just went, “Huh?” you’re definitely not alone.

We have Kris Karnauskas of the University of Colorado Boulder to thank for this fairly baffling description. Translation: Global climate models are too big to take into consideration small island nations like the Maldives or French Polynesia, so instead, they just blend the tiny nations into the sea, which is a big problem for the more than 60 million inhabitants of these disenfranchised freckles as they don’t get a clear picture of how climate change will affect them.

But according to a new study published in Nature Climate Change, up to 73 percent of these island groups — home to about 16 million people — will be facing increasingly dry conditions by mid-century.

Let’s acknowledge the great, cruel irony at work here: The residents of small island nations have effectively done nothing to cause climate change, certainly compared to those of us in the affluent developed world, and yet they’re the ones facing the most imminent and existential threat due to sea level rise. If global climate models can’t even account for them, that seems … wrong?

So to remedy this, Karnauskas, a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences and lead author on the new study, and his colleagues decided to use the precipitation changes predicted by the big global models to, in turn, predict how the aridity (dryness) of these smaller islands will change in the coming decades — something they could do because the climate over an island is basically the same as it is over the surrounding sea, which explains why a blind pig flying overhead wouldn’t be able to detect the island. (The climate researchers call this failure to differentiate between land and sea a “successful blind pig test.”)

And they found that while there were seasonal variations in dryness on the islands, a clear trend toward aridity was slated for a majority of the territories. Among those facing the worst of it are the Juan Fernandez ‘Robinson Crusoe’ Islands, Easter Island, and French Polynesia.

“Islands are already dealing with sea level rise,” Karnauskas said in a press release, “But this shows that any rainwater they have is also vulnerable. The atmosphere is getting thirstier, and would like more of that freshwater back.”

So even if our big fancy models can’t detect it, the story unfolding over the world’s oceans is more complicated than we thought: Freckles are vanishing, the atmosphere is getting thirsty, pigs are flying — and of course, when that starts to happen, all bets are off.

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Tiny island nations aren’t just going to drown. First they’re going to dry out.

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CEO Pay Down in 2015, But Still Higher Than Its Bubble Heights

by bibw6a Posted on April 8, 2016

Mother Jones

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Sad news today from the Wall Street Journal. Among CEOs of big companies, stock-based pay was up 7 percent last year and cash pay was up 2 percent. But thanks to slower growth of CEO pensions, overall compensation was down 4 percent.

But perhaps CEOs will be mollified by the broader picture, which you can see in the chart on the right. CEO pay is up about 44 percent since 2007 in nominal terms, and up about 38 percent when you account for inflation. For ordinary workers, pay has decreased 5 percent since 2007 when you account for inflation.

For anyone wondering why Bernie Sanders has struck such a chord with the electorate, this pretty much tells the story. The Great Recession sure didn’t affect everyone equally, did it? Ordinary schlubs paid a high price, but the folks with the most lavish pay to begin with just shrugged it off like it never happened. If the rich wonder why calls to tax high incomes at 90 percent sound pretty good to a lot of people, this should clue them in.

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CEO Pay Down in 2015, But Still Higher Than Its Bubble Heights

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Chipotle aims for a Better Burger (without making anyone sick)

by UlrichFocken Posted on March 31, 2016

Chipotle aims for a Better Burger (without making anyone sick)

By on 31 Mar 2016commentsShare

Stop the presses: Your favorite purveyor of burrito bowls and foodborne illness is branching out into burgers.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Chipotle Mexican Grill is developing a new burger chain. The name? Better Burger.

Better Burger will continue Chipotle’s existing model of providing fresher fast food than the classic preservative-laden slop you find at most American chains. Chipotle currently has around 2,000 burrito joints around the U.S., but sales and stocks plummeted last year after roughly 500 people in 13 states contracted food poisoning from the eatery.

The great E. coli, salmonella, and norovirus outbreaks of 2015 also forced the chain to close several stores around the country, and led to at least one lawsuit. In February, Chipotle closed all its stores for a day to discuss the crisis and proper food-handling protocol with employees. It also gave away a whole lot of burritos.

Diversifying the revenue stream could be a wise move, according to the WSJ, as the fresher fast food market has gotten increasingly crowded by competitors like Shake Shack and Five Guys. As to whether or not Better Burger will actually be a better burger, stay tuned, but it certainly can’t be any worse than the 14-year-old McDonald’s hamburger that looks the same as the day it was made. Or can it?

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Was the Great Ad Blocker Freakout of 2015 Justified?

by bileteavion Posted on March 23, 2016

Mother Jones

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Six months ago, after years of power surfers happily using ad blockers with no real problems, Apple decided to ruin things for everyone by supporting ad blocking in its products. Since everything Apple does is, by definition, the most pivotal event ever in the tech world—if you happen to work in the online journalism biz, anyway—this caused instant panic in the online journalism biz. Suddenly you could hardly click your mouse without running into a site nagging you about your ad blocker, or even flatly refusing to allow you in unless you turned the blocker off.

It’s time to take stock. Was this panic justified? The use of ad-blocking apps has certainly grown over the past few years, but has it specifically skyrocketed since Apple’s announcement? I’m unable to find any reliable data on this score, and my gut tells me that the panic over this was probably unjustified, as panic usually is.

Needless to say, though, my gut is not infallible. I’d prefer actual evidence. With the benefit of several months for tempers to calm, I think it’s time for someone to examine this and tell us what’s really happened. Who out there has the data to do this?

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Was the Great Ad Blocker Freakout of 2015 Justified?

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Republicans and Democrats spread the blame around at Flint water crisis hearing

by UTKJaimiesgne Posted on March 17, 2016

Republicans and Democrats spread the blame around at Flint water crisis hearing

By on 17 Mar 2016commentsShare

Finger-pointing was the name of the game during a congressional oversight committee hearing on Thursday that, in theory, was meant to hone in on which level of government was at fault in Flint, Michigan’s public health emergency. After hearing from the two star witnesses, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy, the answer appears to be (spoiler alert) all of them are to blame.

Lower-level officials both in the EPA and Snyder administration have already resigned over the mishandling of Flint’s water crisis, including former EPA midwestern regional head Susan Hedman and Michigan Department of Environmental Quality Director Dan Wyant. But politicians’ calls for officials higher up the chain — as high as Snyder and the head of the EPA — to resign reached a fever pitch on Thursday. Democratic lawmakers repeatedly called for his resignation after his administration’s spectacular failures in Flint. Republican lawmakers also ramped up the pressure on McCarthy throughout the long-anticipated, frequently terse House Committee on Oversight and Government Regulation hearing on the Flint water crisis.

“If you want to do the courageous thing, like you said Susan Hedman did, then you, too, should resign,” House Oversight Chair Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) told McCarthy, his voice rising during a heated exchange in which he frequently cut off the EPA head’s attempts to explain state-level restrictions to EPA action.

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During a particularly tense exchange between Chaffetz and McCarthy, the committee chair grew frustrated with McCarthy, saying that she had the ultimate power to do something about Flint. “So why do we even need an EPA?” Chaffetz asked.

Usually Republicans say that to suggest that the EPA isn’t necessary, and that the EPA only exists to burden businesses and its responsibilities should be handed to the states. Today, Chaffetz made a rare case that the EPA failed Flint because it didn’t do more than the law required of the agency.

But Chaffetz still had a point about the EPA’s failure to act — an irony wasn’t lost on some Democrats. “Republicans have been slamming the EPA for overreaching at every possible turn, then they criticize the EPA for not doing more when Governor Snyder fell down on the job,” Rep. William Lacy Clay (D-Mo.) said.

Flint’s lead problems began in April 2014 when a Snyder-appointed emergency manager switched the city’s water supply from Detroit — sourced from the Great Lakes — to Flint River, historically a highly polluted industrial dumping ground. City and state officials assured residents the water was safe to drink until last fall. Though EPA water expert Miguel Del Toral noted as early as February 2015 that Flint’s water supply was no longer being treated for lead and that the tests showing the water was safe were inaccurate, it wasn’t until November that the EPA shared that information with the public, though the agency privately expressed concerns to Michigan officials in the interim months.

Though Snyder and McCarthy at times found themselves attacked from both sides of the aisle (“I am not on your side,” Democratic Rep. Tammy Duckworth told McCarthy), most lawmakers hewed to party lines. Congressional Republicans chose not to focus on Snyder when he apologized for his administration’s failures but cast primary blame on “career bureaucrats.” McCarthy, for her part, stuck firmly to the line that her agency was blocked, repeatedly, by the state government. “I wish we had gone further, I wish we had gone farther, I wish we had yelled from the treetops,” McCarthy said. “But there is no way that my agency created this problem, or there was ambiguity in the existing law that wouldn’t’ve done the same thing that the governor said, which was let them know, use your common sense, don’t put people at risk.”

According to published emails on the administration’s response to Flint, the EPA and Snyder administration were locked in a debate over state officials’ misreading of the federal lead and copper rule, with the state insisting that the water did not need certain chemical treatments when it switched water supply. It was the state’s responsibility to follow the rule, and the EPA’s to ensure Michigan followed it correctly.

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Republicans and Democrats spread the blame around at Flint water crisis hearing

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5 Great Environmental Documentaries

by JamaalLanier Posted on February 28, 2016

The Academy Awards shine a spotlight on the best movies made in any given year. Here’s a list of five of the best environmental documentaries made in 2015.

The Human Experiment
This documentary tells the stories of three families who believe their health has been seriously compromised by toxic chemicals circulating willy-nilly in our environment. Produced and narrated by Academy Award-winner Sean Penn, the filmexamines what we know (and dont know) about the connection betweenskyrocketing rates of cancer, autism, infertility, asthma, and other diseases and the chemicals we encounter in such common household items as plastic baby and water bottles, fragrances in perfumes and cosmetics, and chemicals in shampoos, deodorant and cleaning products.

Companies that produce and use toxic chemicals do not need to prove they dont pose a human health risk. That’s because the federal Toxic Substances Control Act, called TSCA, places the burden of proof on the consumer, not the company producing the product. The film makes a powerful argument for strengthening federal laws to get dangerous compounds off the market and away from the people they can hurt. You can read the full review on Care2 here.

Stink
Stink also examines the impact toxic chemicals can have on our lives, but from the point of view of a father who is shocked when the new pajamas he buys for his two daughters stink so badly from the flame retardants they’ve been doused in that the girls can’t wear them. The father, who is the filmmaker Jon Whelan, goes on a quest to figure out why so many toxic chemicals are allowed into our world. He also tries to figure out whether his wife’s death from breast cancer could somehow be connected to chemicals she was exposed to. The film is gripping, even devastating in parts, but also lights a fire under the viewer, as the filmmaker makes it clear that we citizens must support stronger legislation to reduce toxic exposures.

Mislead: America’s Secret Epidemic
Tamara Rubin founded the Lead Safe America Foundation when she realized her own children were lead poisoned. Then she decided to make a movie about the lead poisoning crisis that is making so many people, specifically children, sick. The resulting documentary, titled MisLEAD: America’s Secret Epidemic, makes a powerful case that lead poisoning is dangerous, pervasive and must be stopped.

Tamara and her crew highlight 17 different families, all of whom are trying to help children already lead poisoned while preventing the situation from getting worse. The documentary draws a direct line between the “sudden, alarming” rise in the number of American children suffering from ADD, ADHD, Autism Spectrum symptoms and similar neurological disorders and children’s exposure to lead. These disabilities cost society more than $50 billion annually, says Lead Safe America. Especially in light of the terrible crisis facing the families living in Flint, Michigan whose children have been poisoned by lead in drinking water, the film couldn’t be more timely.

National Parks Adventure 3D
For a completely different kind of film, don’t missMacGillivray Freeman’s National Parks Adventure in 3D. Narrated by Academy Award winner Robert Redford, the movie takes you on an IMAX adventure into what Redford calls the “most awe-inspiring, jaw-dropping places that belong to us all.”

Yosemite, Yellowstone, the Everglades, the Redwoods, the Grand Canyon, Arches and Canyonlands are among the nation’s crown jewels featured in this film, all perfectly suited to the giant-screen cinematographic adventure IMAX provides. If you liked some ofMacGillivray Freeman’s other Great Adventure Films including “Everest,” “Dolphins,” “Journey Into Amazing Caves” and “Grand Canyon Adventure” you’ll probably love this one, too.

Short of visiting a national park yourself, this may be one of the best ways to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the creation of the national park system, which occurs on August 25, 2016.

My Life as a Turkey
Writer and naturalist Joe Hutto quite unexpectedly found himself raising 13endangered wild turkeys in the flatlands of Florida from the moment they hatched. Hutton told the talefirst in his book “Illumination in the Flatwoods.” Now , he brings it to life in this poignant film, and it’s not one you want to miss.

“Day after day, for over a year, I saw no one – except my family,” he says as the movie opens, Joe walkingshrouded in mist and surrounded by his feathered youngsters. “It was a family like none you know. But I’m a mother, it seems, and these are my children.”

Hutto spent each day amblingdeep into the Everglades with these birds, roosting with them, taking them foraging and even learning to speak their “language.” In the process, he says, “they revealed their charming curiosity and surprising intellect.”

The day came for Hutto the way it comes for all parents, and he had to let his brood go off on their own. Keep some tissues handy when you watch this sweet, lovely film.

For more film options, check out the offerings at the D.C. Environmental Film Festivalor the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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Americans spend 30 billion hours a year commuting. And it’s killing them

by KatrinZachary Posted on February 27, 2016

Americans spend 30 billion hours a year commuting. And it’s killing them

By on 26 Feb 2016commentsShare

Commuting can be one of the most frustrating parts of having a job — a dull, talk-radio-filled, coffee-fueled drive every morning with all the other schmucks on the road.

I experienced it once while living in North Carolina: an awful slog through traffic lights and sprawl that annoyed me so much that I moved. Now, my commute is on foot, an easy mile walk to downtown Seattle, and on a clear day, you can see Mt. Rainer. Rather than dread my commute, I enjoy it. But I am one of the lucky few.

According to a new study, the average American spends 26 minutes traveling to work each way, and for over 80 percent of Americans, that time is spent in a car, usually alone. And the worse part is, it’s only getting longer. The Washington Post reports that 26 minute is:

the longest it’s been since the Census began tracking this data in 1980. Back then the typical commute was only 21.7 minutes. The average American commute has gotten nearly 20 percent longer since then.

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According to the Census, there were a little over 139 million workers commuting in 2014. At an average of 26 minutes each way to work, five days a week, 50 weeks a year, that works out to something like a total of 1.8 trillion minutes Americans spent commuting in 2014. Or, if you prefer, call it 29.6 billion hours, 1.2 billion days, or a collective 3.4 million years. With that amount of time, we could have built nearly 300 Wikipedias, or built the Great Pyramid of Giza 26 times — all in 2014 alone.

Instead, we spent those hours sitting in cars and waiting for the bus.

The Post concentrates on the negative effects on the commuter. People with longer commutes are more likely to suffer from obesity, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, back and neck pain, divorce, depression, and death, according the Post, as well as to be less politically engaged, more likely to be poor, miss work, and have other problems. There’s also issues of lost productivity, says the Post: Think of how many more apps we could invent with all those hours! But there’s another issue they didn’t mention. That’s right: climate change.

The vast majority of those nearly 30 billion hours spent commuting every year are by people alone in their gas-powered cars. The carbon footprint of that is just massive, and as commutes grow, it’ll only get worse. It’s a complex problem: Commutes are so long both because cities are so expensive and because mass transit in most American cities is so inadequate.

Take Seattle: If you can’t afford to live close to the city center (or if you’re not willing to live in a studio the size of a jail cell, as I do), you’ll have to contend with either driving yourself to work in the fourth worst traffic in the country, or relying on an often unreliable bus or train.

The current system isn’t working as the myriad of negative effects on both us and the planet show. But until we can figure out how to make cities more affordable and build robust transit systems and carpooling options, the answer may be simply to work from home when it’s possible. We might not be able to teleport yet, but for those who can, there’s always teleworking.

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Americans spend 30 billion hours a year commuting. And it’s killing them

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8 Processed Foods You Can Easily Make From Scratch

by MyrnaOneal Posted on February 26, 2016

Sure, processed foods can save you a little time. But what you gain in convenience, you lose in money, environmental impact and maybe even health.

That’s because processed foods require more labor to convert them from their natural state to something that fits in a box, bag or tub. You’re also paying for the chemicals added to the processed food to keep them fresh. You’re paying for the packaging, too, which is totally worthless once you get it home. Indeed, $1 out of every $11 you spend at the grocery store you spend on packaging you throw away.

Speaking of that packaging, it’s probably the biggest source of trash in your home. Think about the pile of empty boxes, bags and wrapping you’re left with after you unload your groceries and put them in the refrigerator or cupboard. Plastic waste is especially egregious since many communities still don’t recycle and it doesn’t biodegrade. Instead, it turns into millions of pieces of microplastic that get in the oceans and soil and that animals mistake for food.

Here are 7 processed foods that normally come wrapped in paper or plastic that you can easily make at home. They’ll be fresher, cheaper and waste-free if you skip plastic produce bags and take your own when you shop.

1) Yogurt
Yogurt couldn’t be easier to make at home. Heat a half-gallon of milk to about 180 degrees, using a candy thermometer to test the temperature. You can heat it on the stove, but I usually do it in the microwave to prevent scalding. Let it cool to 110 degrees. Put a quarter cup of the milk in a glass or small mixing bowl and add a couple of tablespoons of powdered milk if you want thicker yogurt (this step isn’t essential). Add the mixture back into the bowl. Add 2 tablespoons of yogurt and whisk into the milk. Cover the bowl with a towel. Some people then put the bowl in a warm oven. I wrap mine in a heating pad, which I set on its highest setting for a couple of hours and then turn down to low for a few hours. It will take 4-6 hours for the milk to become yogurt. You can spoon it into individual serving jars or keep it in the bowl. Use the whey that collects in the bottom of the bowl in pasta sauces, salad dressings or just stir it back into the yogurt.

2) Hummus
Buy raw chickpeas in bulk at your grocery store or food coop. If possible, use your own reusable bag to hold the peas. At home, soak them in water to cover overnight until soft. Or simmer them for a couple of hours until soft. Drain the chickpeas, rinse under running water, then drain and toss into a food processor with 3 tablespoons olive oil, 3 tablespoons tahini, salt, pepper, a clover or two of chopped garlic and the juice from at least half a lemon. Process until smooth. Season to taste, adding more lemon, garlic or tahini as desired.

3) Shredded Cheese
Pre-shredded cheese always comes in a plastic bag or tub along with chemicals to prevent mold growth and even the dust from wood pulp which is added to prevent the cheese from clumping. Why not grate your own cheese instead? It will be fresher, cheaper and you can minimize packaging if you buy a chunk of cheese from your deli counter rather than in the dairy aisle.

4) Salad Dressing
Most salad dressing is sold in plastic bottles which are hard, if not impossible, to recycle in most communities. Yet, DIY salad dressing couldn’t be easier to make, and it’s tasty, too. For a simple vinaigrette, combine 1 part olive oil to 3 parts red wine vinegarvinegar in a clean jar with a lid. Add minced red onion, a sprinkling of salt, pepper and garlic powder, and one or two teaspoons of Dijon mustard. Stir vigorously until well combined. Adjust seasonings to taste. You can replace red wine vinegar with fresh lemon juice, add finely chopped basil, or fiddle with it in other ways you like. For more ideas, see 7 Fantastic Salad Dressings You Should Make Today.

5) Mayonnaise
If you’ve never made your own mayonnaise, you’re in for a real treat. It’s fresh, flavorful and very creamy. Check out Alton Brown’s recipe, which whips together an egg yolk, salt, dry mustard, a bit of sugar, lemon juice, white wine vinegar and of course, oil. Double or triple the ingredients depending on how much you need, keeping in mind it will last just about a week in the fridge. Store it in glass jars with tightly fitting lids. And don’t miss this great Care2 post, 12 Surprising Uses for Mayonnaise.

6) Ketchup
I find most processed ketchup contains way too much sugar. You can dial the sweetness down and turn up the spices and flavor if you make your own. You can make it from canned tomatoes, but to skip the packaging, use fresh plum tomatoes you get at the grocery store or farmers market. Peel, seed and dice the tomatoes, add a tablespoon or so of minced red onion, a tablespoon or so of apple cider vinegar, minced garlic and hot sauce if you want some spice. Process in a food processor. If it’s not as thick as you’d like, simmer it on low until some of the liquid evaporates. You can also play with spices like ground ginger, cinnamon, honey and cloves. The beauty of making it yourself is that you can make it exactly the way you like it. Don’t be afraid to experiment.

7) Salsa
Why buy this in plastic tubs when it’s so much better made fresh? Chop fresh tomatoes into a small dice until you have about two cups. Add around a quarter cup chopped red onion and a smattering of diced green peppers or cucumbers if you want more veggies. Flavor with lime juice, chopped cilantro leaves, a teaspoon or so of ground cumin, a couple of cloves of garlic minced and something hot – Sriracha, Tabasco, chili pepper flakes or chopped chili peppers. Add the heat incrementally so you don’t overdo it.

8) Juice
Most juice comes in plastic throwaway bottles or jugs. You can make your own orange, tangerine and grapefruit juice simply by cutting the fruit in half and using a hand juicer to press out the liquid. For vegetable juices and apple or pear juice, you’ll probably need an actual juicing machine (most food processors will simply puree the fruit or veggies, not juice them). But if you drink a lot of juice, it might be worth the investment to buy an electric juicer.

What’s your favorite “make from scratch” food that helps you skip the processed product?

Related
Healthy Homemade Yogurt
Would You Like a Little Wood Pulp With Your Pizza?

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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8 Processed Foods You Can Easily Make From Scratch

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