Earthship

[ecogirl]

Hey! I was wondering if any of you have heard of the earthship. I got a leaflet about it and it's great! Here look at this site- http://www.earthship.net/

[Computer Cowboy]

They've liked living in them, and they're certainly easy to heat and cool as advertised.

There's always been something vaguely bothersome to me about the concept, though. The question could be raised as to whether or not this really is 'recycling' of tires, cans, and bottles. I mean, truly recycling a tire might be defined as grinding up a used one and reusing the material to make a new one, to prevent the necessity of constant reintroduction of newly manufactured petrochemicals. The same could be said about the bottles and cans. In the earthship concept, those materials are semi-permanently removed from the loop.

Contrast that with plain adobe houses, which have always been common in my area and share many of the same advantages of earthships. Living in and maintaining an adobe house amounts to resisting the earth's constant effort to reclaim the material it's made of: earth. Shortly after humans stop living in and maintaining one, it starts to melt back into the earth, eventually leaving very little behind. Around here, you often see weathered roof framing sitting directly on the ground, as if it's been blown off of a building. But that's not it: the walls have simply melted from underneath it, and eventually, the wood will rot away also.

A similar process involving an earthship will leave behind a mound of old tires, cans, and bottles.

I sort of like the idea that, when I die and return to the soil, my adobe house will join me in the process. Unless, of course, a living person decides to intervene awhile longer.

[NaturalDesignChick]

Our neighbor has an Earthship. She tells people that the tires are reused instead of recycled.

Otherwise, it's an interesting house.