Trash Building: Extreme Recycling

The Texas Beer Can House
Sure, you can melt down aluminum cans to produce other products, but why not skip the middle man? The pet project of John Milkovisch in Houston, Texas is a one-of-a-kind tribute to what you can do if you put your mind to it. Constructed from an estimated 50,000 beer cans (that were emptied by John, his wife, as well as their friends and neighbors), the structure has been called art by some. In John's opinion, however, "I guess I just thought it was a good idea. And it's easier than painting." Check out John's work at beercanhouse.com.

When Life Gave Them Lemons?
According to News Channel 8 in Portland Oregon, the new house built by Shannon Quimby isn't new at all. Constructed primarily from materials salvaged from her old house that had to be demolished and erected on the same lot, Shannon and her husband decided to set an example for the rest of us and show just what could be done with the scraps that would have otherwise been hauled off to a landfill. In an interview with Channel 8, Quimby proudly states, "I think I'm at the count of 150 different ways we reused materials throughout the house, everything from foundation to framing to landscaping to interior. It's been an amazing, an amazing experiment."

Papercrete
Whether you call it "paper adobe," "fibrous cement," "padobo," or (our favorite term) "papercrete," the fact is this stuff is out there and people are building houses with it. The recipe varies (some use a mixture of cement, some use dirt and sand), but the basic idea stays the same: make an industrial grade paper-mache from discarded newspaper, cardboard, and junk-mail that's suitable for home building.

Folks that have already used the substance, like Gorden Solberg, author of "Building with Papercrete and Paper Adobe," describe it as, "?very similar to working with concrete, except that papercrete is much less heavy, and is much easier to work with." Unfortunately, as this technology is "experimental," there's no real data as to how long these paper structures will last. We, however, will be keeping our eye on this one!

Criticism of Recycled Material Building
Though the idea of a house made entirely from recycled materials is a pleasant one, critics have had no problem noting that many of these structures tend to look a little "odd." Some homes constructed from recycled materials, like the Quimby house in Portland, look very much like any other house. Others, like papercrete homes and the ever-popular "Earthships" (homes whose claim to fame comes from utilizing used tires and solar panels in their design) can range in appearance from almost abnormal to other worldly. However, since the designs are created primarily to better our future, we see no problem with these homes looking a bit different than conventionally constructed houses. And for anyone who's somewhat perturbed that 21st century architecture looks remarkably "un-futuristic," the unique aesthetics of these building techniques are proof that not only are we not standing still, we're moving in the right direction.