History of Recycled Homes

The Environmental Malthusian Dilemma

• Thomas Malthus was a doleful soul -- an economist of the late 1700s, who pointed out the gloomy mathematics of a population that was growing exponentially in a world with a finite number of acres to feed its inhabitants. While Malthus focused on the potential for starvation, he is an important thinker in the world of environmentalism because pollution, greenhouse gasses, landfill, habitat loss -- all of the negative effects that modern recycling tries to circumvent -- are also byproducts of population explosion. Malthus' concerns are readily apparent in modern environmentalism.

Recycled and Engineered Materials

• A stepping stone in repurposing objects as houses is recycling building materials in the construction of traditional houses. Two modern trends can be seen. One is the desirability of using recycled wood in custom homes, such as beams taken from old, disassembled barns. This trend has grown considerably in the 21st century. It was preceded by the growing popularity of engineered timber products made from what used to be mill byproducts. Wood chips that would have otherwise been burned are now redeployed for use in engineered wooden joists -- structural members that historically came from old-growth softwoods like redwood and Douglas fir.

Objects Repurposed as Homes

• A surge in interest in recycled objects over the last twenty years comes from an unusual source: The U.S. trade deficit. The amount of goods imported into the U.S. far exceeds those exported. The U.S. used to be a net exporter. In the 1990s, a small trade deficit grew to a an 80 billion dollar deficit. A side effect was and is a huge number of interlocking steel shipping containers with little value sitting in U.S. ports because there's not enough demand abroad to put products in them and ship them to another port. They accumulate here. Subsequently, the price of steel containers is low. The structural integrity of these containers caught the attention of many designers and builders who started a recycling trend of making homes from shipping containers.

More Than Just Homes

• As designers and builders explored the idea of shipping-container homes, it set off light bulbs for lots of iconoclasts. Because the containers interlock at the corners and they're already designed to stack like Lego building blocks, people began expanding on the idea of one container per house. For example, condominiums and portable, emergency shelters have been constructed from containers, and the trend continues with larger housing projects.

A Domino Affect

• The practice of turning containers into houses -- and perhaps the booming real estate prices of the early 2000s -- fueled interest in turning other objects into homes. While building codes are not particularly friendly to using recycled objects, retired aircraft, boat hulls, complete boats, trains, buses, cisterns, barns, silos and water towers have all been converted into homes.