Earthship Accommodations Provide Self-Sustainable Airbnb Stays

Many of us make an effort to lead environmentally sustainable day to day lives, but when travelling or on holiday, sustainability can often be more challenging than at home. Airbnb has been looking to change this with their more sustainable Earth house category of listings, with Earthship’s various listings in Taos, New Mexico offering a luxurious off-the-grid lifestyle for anyone looking for a self-sufficient vacation. With six different Earthships listed on Airbnb, founder and architect of Earthship Biotecture, Michael Reynolds, provides environmentally friendly homes with all of the expected modern amenities one could want.

From fully featured kitchens and bathrooms to more technological amenities like wifi and television, Reynolds’ Earthships offer the perfect harmony of self-sustainable nature-surrounded lifestyle with modern technology’s conveniences. Entirely built with natural and recyclable materials and with contained sewage treatment, these homes use thermal and solar heating and cooling, are powered by solar and wind power, and even produce their own organic and sustainably grown food. Part of Reynold’s goal with Earthship Biotecture is to teach others how to build self-sustainable homes through the Earthship Biotecture Academy. You can visit the Earthship Biotecture website for more information about Earthship homes and their construction.

Earthships are designed with six key principles which take advantage of the earth’s resources sustainably. All Earthships are built using natural and repurposed materials, with used tires as rammed-earth bricks and adobe mud to pack and plaster the walls. These densely packed thermal mass “bricks” of tire and adobe mud eliminate the need for a concrete foundation and store temperature efficiently. By using natural ventilation and operable vent boxes for cooling, Earthship structures heat and cool themselves without electric heat or the burning of fossil fuels or wood. Earthships are also constructed to take advantage of natural daylight with well-placed windows and skylights, and use highly efficient lighting, pumps, and refrigeration to lower energy consumption. Since they also don’t require electrical heat or air conditioning, an Earthship’s electrical needs are about 25% of those of a traditional house. These are easily met using solar panels and windmills, making these homes entirely operational using renewable energy sources.

Earthships collect rainwater and snowmelt from their roofs, using a pump and filter system to clean water before sending it to a solar hot water heater and a pressure tank. This water is then used for bathing, washing dishes, and laundry, with the used gray water flowing to interior botanical cells for plants to use and treat. Earthship’s plant specialist has experimented to find the best interior gray-water plants and produce, with the botanical cells using custom-designed mini-hydroponic planters in suspended planters provide more growing space. This water, now doubly used and treated, is then transferred to the Earthship’s toilet tank for flushing. Finally, the toilet water goes to a conventional septic tank which flows into an outdoor botanical cell to hydrate exterior landscaping plants.

While Earthships are an impressive feat of sustainable engineering, in a Forbes article Reynolds says that “None of it is rocket science. It’s all eighth grade biology and physics.” For those interested in learning more about building and designing Earthships, the Earthship Biotecture Academy offers four week classes and three week internships based in Taos, New Mexico. Next time you’re looking for a vacation that is self-sustainable and in tune with the surrounding environment, take a look at Airbnb’s Earth house category to find a variety of Earthships and other sustainable homes.