Garbage Warrior

This evening I watched a pretty interesting documentary called Garbage Warrior, by Oliver Hodge. It is about an architect/builder named Michael Reynolds who more or less invented self-sustaining homes he calls Earth Ships.These things are pretty amazing.

First of all, they are made mostly out of trash. For walls and insulation, Reynolds and his building team use old tires, bottles and cans. They fill the tires with dirt. This makes them a really sturdy, dense item to build houses with--they are durable, as well as awesome insulators. The old beer cans, plastic and glass bottles are literally just packed together with cement or similar bonding agents to create walls. Afterward, they plaster over the bottles and tires so that you can't see them. The walls just looks like stucco. The way it turns out, aesthetically, is really beautiful. They use the glass bottles also for decoration, by cutting them and placing them throughout the house almost as little stained-glass portholes letting light inside.

Earth Ships are self-sustainable in that they create their own energy, gather their own water, and process their own waste. Each house has a greenhouse inside, which mimics a tropical atmosphere and grows all of the food needed to survive. I just find it mind boggling that you could basically live in one of these houses for the rest of your life and not have to pay for food, water, electricity or heat ever again. All you'd have to do is be able to pay for the house and have land to put it on, and you'd be set for life.

Oh, not to mention that Michael Reynolds himself is a total character. He looks like a homeless wizard and spouts the kind of hyperbolic, swear-punctuated opinions that would sound right at home coming out of my Jewish grandmother. But don't let his impromptu pull-ups session or the potty-mouth deter you; this guy is a visionary, and a pretty endearing one at that.

New life goal: live in/build (?!) an Earth Ship.