Off-Grid Desert Community Has Homes Made Of Trash

In New Mexico’s desert town of Taos, you will find a large community of people who live in “earthships,” homes made out of trash.

Yes, you read that right. The homes these ‘earthshippers’ dwell in are made out of garbage!

It all started when Mike Reynolds noticed an accelerating waste and consumption problem. He wanted to design a way to build fully sustainable homes out of this garbage, that didn’t require any utilities for comfortable living.

40 years later, his vision is booming, and there is now a community of like-minded people who live off the grid in these earthships.

Upon first look, these homes in the Greater World Earthship Community just look like mounds of dirt, but they are so much more than that.

Features of these homes include: built-in closets in each bedroom, washer and dryer hook-ups, propane range, DC solar powered refrigerators, high efficiency lighting throughout, Wifi, small fenced yard for pets, and more.

According to Earthship Biotecture, a standard two bedroom, two bathroom Earthship in this community currently costs nearly $250,000, but larger models can cost as much as $1.5 million. While it seems expensive, the majority of the cost is labor, so if you can build it yourself or know someone who can help, they are fairly inexpensive to build.

This Tao community has about 130 Earthships, but there are around 3,000 others around the world in France, Germany, Haiti, Canada and many other states in the U.S.

One man named Chris spent a few months producing a short documentary about Earthships and wrote about his experience.

“It’s 98 degrees outside as I write this. A Minnesota 98…so humid. Humid as hell. The window unit in my apartment struggles to pump out cool air. But, it IS working. So I should be comfortable, right? Maybe physically, sure. But after spending a few months producing a short documentary about Earthships, I know I’m part of the problem,” he wrote.

“The problem being the methods we fight the heat, or fight the cold, the way our homes and workplaces are built, and really the way we live,” he continued. “Right, it’s not a small problem. Which makes Earthships so compelling, because they directly combat those problems.”

Chris said that although it was 85 degrees outside, it was only 68 degrees in the Earthship without AC or central air. At night, it stayed at 68 degrees, despite no heat or boiler.

“Honest to god, I was inspired,” he wrote. “It’s almost like a primitively human experience, while still having all of the amenities of a house. It was a great feeling, one you can’t put into words. I’ve been telling people, you just have to go and experience it for yourself.”