By Trish Smith

You’ve seen them on huge cargo boats across the world, and if you live in Maryland like I do, then you’ve seen then come in and out of the port of Baltimore carrying everything from steel and iron to crabs and coffee. They’re called cargo shipping containers, and they’ve become an unexpected fighter against carbon emissions.

How can something so big reduce your carbon footprint? Instead of melting the containers into steel, which takes about 9,000 kilowatt hours of energy, if you reuse the container to build a home you only use 400 kilowatt hours of energy. That’s what I call energy conservation. And that’s why a company called SG Blocks decided to start a business using excess shipping containers.

David Cross and Steve Armstrong founded SG Blocks in South Carolina to help homeowners find an affordable and eco-friendly alternative to traditionally-built homes. By building these homes for 15% less money and in 2 months less time, they showed the people of North Charleston that they could afford a nice, water resistant home and protect the planet at the same time. They could also live termite-free.

Along with Cross and Armstrong, here are a few other stories about people building recycled container homes:

• The Riverside Building built along the Thames River in London has 5 floors and 22 office spaces
• Youth centers, artist studios and more make up an entire community in London’s Container City
• Pallotta Teamworks, a charity company that created the original Breast Cancer 3-day walk, has its own Mobile City, which is made from cargo shipping containers that have been converted into office space
• An article in Container Homes focuses on a recycling plant in Costa Rica that uses the shipping containers to build earthquake and fire-proof homes. They even recycle plastic trash from the streets to build plastic beams for these homes.
• Engineers and shipping experts at Tampa Armature Works use old cargo containers to build steel buildings that are used on military compounds around the world.

Magoline Hazelton, who has lived in one of the container homes built by SG Blocks for the past 5 years, enjoys her container home, and it looks like more people every day are getting a chance to enjoy one of their own.

If these containers continue to be such a huge hit for homeowners in the U.S., we might just have to rival London’s Container City by becoming a Container Country.

Source: CNN

Share