Emerging Earthships

When Earthship pioneer Michael Reynolds arrived in Haiti to survey the earthquake damage, what was intended as a recon visit quickly became The Haiti Earthship Project [1]. Guided by Reynolds, 40 local Haitians aged four to 50, built a permanent, sustainable structure from waste materials - mostly tires and glass bottles - in just four days. 

 

Requiring very few, easily acquired skills, local people can build an Earthship – a building that will take care of you, while still being sustainable, affordable, strong and logical – and work towards and within “An entire method that is independent of corporations, largely independent of oil and independent of politics.”

 

An important key to the project is the sense of empowerment instilled in those who helped. “They built the building!” says Reynolds. “The real thing that shows it’s possible for them to do it, is that they did it.”

Michael Reynolds and Earthship Biotecture [2] teams have built more than 1000 Earthships, including for disaster relief in China and the Andaman Islands. He plans to return to Haiti in October 2011 to add more sustainable systems to this building, again with the help of local Haitians, and attempt to move forward project  H.E.L.P. - Haiti Eco Living Project - groups of Earthships the Haitian people can build themselves that are absolutely sustainable.

Earthship Biotecture is currently gathering information on getting to Japan. Michael Reynolds will be on J-WAVE81.3FM, Tokyo [3], on March 22 around 3:35PM.

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