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Earthships: the zero waste, off-the-grid and sustainable homes of the future

an earthship house in New Mexico

Imagine this. You鈥檝e taken a wrong turn off U.S. Route 64 in northern New Mexico and suddenly find yourself on what seems to be an alien planet - a grouping of strange, organically shaped buildings located in the middle of nowhere.

The buildings are low to the ground, horseshoe-shaped听and their walls are dotted with beautiful colored glass. They have no shortage of windows. Around and inside the buildings are plants, both aesthetically pleasing and food-producing. The glass in the walls lets colored light shine through in a beautiful mimic of famous chapels and worship spaces. But these constructions are entirely new and serve a much different purpose.

According to the听, an earthship is 鈥渁 type of passive solar house that is made of both natural and upcycled materials...earthships can be completely off-grid or partially off-grid.鈥 On top of that, 鈥渟ince it is also a passive solar house, it is also very tight and interacts only with the sun and the earth for heating and cooling, providing stable comfort year round in any climate.鈥

Additionally, earthships provide their own electricity through photovoltaics (converting light into electricity) and wind power. They contain and treat their own waste water. They catch water and can even act as interior greenhouses to grow food, treating the water at the same time. In short, a highly sustainable and zero waste shelter and way of life.

50 years strong

Michael Reynolds created the earthship movement in the 1970s when he was fresh out of college and wanted to create a new type of architecture that was sustainable, off-the-grid and required little skill to construct.

The first ever earthship is now affectionately known as 鈥淭he Hobbit House.鈥澨齌he Hobbit House is small, containing just one room in a studio format that includes a bed, couch听and kitchen. The bathroom is located in a semi-private walkway behind the house, attached to the garden. It is even available to rent as an听.

The hub of the earthship world is Taos, New Mexico. In the greater world earthship community, there are currently about 60 homes located on 640 acres of land 10 minutes west of Taos. According to the Earthship Biotecture Website, the annual cost for those living there is just $150 for road maintenance and community features听and property taxes for the land the members own. That鈥檚 it. No water bills, electricity bills, gas bills, mortgage - those who live there only need to pay for necessities like whatever food they cannot grow, clothes听and personal hygiene products.

, those in the earthship community were also - as a result of听their off-the-grid way of life - basically unaffected by the coronavirus pandemic. That鈥檚 right. The global pandemic that changed all of our lives so completely simply did not interfere with the earthship way of life.

Mark Fleischhaker, who lives in an earthship called the Darfield Earthship in Canada, was interviewed by Insider: "For me, it's kind of felt like business as usual because this is how I've always been living," he said.

According to Insider, the amount of people interested in the earthship community has grown exponentially over the pandemic. As people have observed modern society collapse, they have become increasingly interested in a way of life that does not depend on this infrastructure at all. Reynolds has seen all-time-highs of participants for his earthship-building classes.

Although earthships have presented so many benefits, there鈥檚 one reason why they won鈥檛 become widely adopted: most people don鈥檛 want to live off-the-grid. We like our cities, we like our communities听and we like being within driving distance of stores and restaurants and friends.

But that doesn鈥檛 mean that we can鈥檛 learn from earthships and integrate some of the things that they do into modern architecture. If every building had its own heating and cooling technology, made its own energy听and grew its own food from water that would otherwise be wasted, businesses would save money and the earth would be a better place.

  • Official site by Michael Reynolds, creator of the first earthship
  • Official site
  • Official
  • 30 minute by Off the Cuff