Recycled Shipping Containers are the Future Sustainable Homes

In the history of human life, so much seems to have happened, yet it is the last three hundred years that seems to have revolutionised the way we live. Industrialisation did indeed make working on the land easier and early transport made leaving your own village a possibility but huge changes seem to have happened within our own lifetimes.  We’ve passed through steam trains, electric trains, aeroplanes and jumbo jets, calculators and computers and have arrived in a time where the world is in our own home.

But even that home has changed.  Now that we have access to libraries of knowledge at the press of a button (and might I add, without the fear of an overdue fine), we can see the lack of respect we have shown towards our planet.  In turn, we can see what efforts are being made to reverse the damage.  Recycling of waste may be respect in its easiest form and we can all do that.  However, home owners can go a lot further, by looking at systems such as waste disposal, heating, re-using grey water (any used water that didn’t come from the toilet / sewage system).

Eco-Friendly from the Word ‘Go’.

If you’re right at the point of becoming a first-time home owner, why not go the whole hog, before you get buried in heavy direct debits for mortgages and utility bills?  Look at today’s lifestyle and take on board that buying a brick and mortar house is not today’s best option.  Why?  Because today’s lifestyle is well and truly transient.  You may find work hundreds of miles from home.  In the future, you may want to be nearer your son who is at university.  When you reach retirement age, you might be planning to move into the country. Things really do change.

Today’s lifestyle is about transient homes and, as nice as they are for short periods of time, we’re not talking caravans.  Today, those in-the-know are having their homes built modular-style and at a much cheaper price than a traditional build.  Recycled shipping containers can form the bones of these homes, so the skeleton is waterproof, rust-proof, wind-proof and not on the woodworm’s list of favourites.  A twenty feet container is enough for a student pad, so two containers would make a good starter home.  But the beauty of modular buildings is that, when your family increases in size you don’t have to start looking for a bigger house: simply add another container to your already personalised modular building.

With correct planning permission, your home can be a bungalow or a two or more storey building, as these containers interlock so sturdily, that even the strongest of hurricanes can’t budge them.  And when fitted with external cladding, an eco-friendly home looks just like any other home.

But before you get to that stage of cladding, you will be adding all the eco-friendly systems that support both the planet and your pocket.  My Space Pod is an excellent site to look at, to understand just what is available for heating, energy, saving water etc..  They prepare the containers offsite and, once the planning permission has been granted and the ground has been prepared to receive your new container home,  the ‘plug and play’ home is up and running.

Getting in right at the beginning really is a good idea, as starting the house ladder with eco-friendly systems in place is a lot easier than changing a traditional method.  Savings on the cost are being made from day one and remember that, when retirement comes, you can take all of your precious memories with you.  What could be better than that?