Earthships are NOT radically sustainable, how Mike Reynolds claims! They use insulation, passive solar gain, and thermal mass: very sustainable solution! They produce their own energy by photovoltaic, solar thermal systems and wind turbines: very sustainable! They collect their own water, use it several times and clean it again: very sustainable. But they are built with tires, produced from Oil that contains lots of metal as well: not sustainable at all! They use Aluminium cans that get produced with lots of energy: not sustainable at all! They use the climate killer Cement: not sustainable at all. They are insulated with oil based Styrofoam: not sustainable at all They use plastic bottles made from oil: not sustainable at all. Don’t misunderstand me: I’m a big fan of earthships – I would just love to have REALLY sustainable earthships one day. I can explain it best if I start with Aluminium cans: There is lots of Aluminium on this planet, but there are only few places where we can mine it. but the use of Aluminium is growing rapidly, of course especially in China and India. The production of Aluminium causes big destruction in nature. The Production of Aluminium needs lots lots of energy! A small factory needs as much electricity as a city with 300.000 Inhabitants! With each can that you use in an earthship you create the need to produce new cans with enormous destruction of nature and an enormous energy consumption- This is far away from being at least a little bit sustainable. Here in Germany we banned cans! Beer was sold in supermarkets in cans – not anymore now : only some few exceptions are allowed. Now we use plastic bottles. This led to the result that the aluminium that we use here comes 80% from recycling. And recycled Aluminium needs only 5 % of the energy as new aluminium! Aluminium is a very good Material. We can use it in many for things that have to be stable and light weight. But for cans it si stupid. Because the production causes so much destruction and consumes so much energy first and second: they have been introduced at times when heavy glass bottles were still standard. This has changed: now we have plastic bottles. (And I hope we will soon change to biodegradable plastic.) Bottles are more elegant and you can close them if you don’t want to drink everything. All in all it is very un-ecological to use cans! WE can reduce our aluminium needs to these applications where it si really needed. You understand what I mean? Real sustainability means Recycling! And NOT just burying materials and energy in a wall! Humans have built houses since they live on this planet and have never used metal and especially not aluminium for walls. You don’t need metal to build a wall. Now, MR and his fans will say: Yes, but society produces this waste. So we use it and reduce waste! Yes, but that IS the problem! A society that produces waste like crazy! And if you use it like MR does, you send a signal to this society: “Go on like this – waste like crazy! Drink more beer from cans – drive as much and as fast as you can – we need cans and tyres to save our planet!” Together with Aluminium comes the next problem. To glue these cans together to form a wall you need Cement. And Cement is a heavy climate killer. (9% of our CO2 emissions come from Cement production) There is no place in a radically sustainable house for a climate killer! You can build stone walls, rammed earth walls or cob walls and build a small roof over it – that’s stable enough as well and cans and cement are away. The same in the end with plastic bottles. They can be recycled as well. All these technologies exist. We just have to use them. This is not a question of technology anymore – it exists. It is a political question if politicians and therefore society) does it. It is not the duty of architects and builders to solve these problems! By just burying these problems you will never, never solve them. The only way to really solve them is: RECYLING. And in the case of the cans, additionally: ban them Insulating an earthship with Styrofoam is also not a sustainable solution. Made from oil it will be over anyway one day and there are lots of natural alternatives like hemp, shredded clothes very cheap straw bales (that I would recommend therefore)
Posted on: Sat, 29 Mar 2014 00:43:53 +0000