Earthships

Earthships are environmentally friendly homes that are built from old tyres and bottles stuffed with earth. They harvest and recycle their own water, generate their own electricity, maintain comfortable temperatures without an input of energy and grow their own food. The main disadvantage is the large amount of labour required to build them. See earthship.com for further details.

A building guide is available on The Pirate Bay:

• Vol. 1, on architectural features
• Vol. 2 and the water, energy and other systems
• Vol. 3, on the broader implications of this sort of living