On Friday 7th August we sponsored Brighton & Hove Chamber of Commerce’s tour of Earthship Brighton, a highly impressive and innovative project.
Earthship Brighton was the Low Carbon Trust’s first project and was the first Earthship to be built in England. The Earthship is a cutting edge “green” building, constructed using 100% recycled materials, including waste car tyres, wine bottles and gravestone off-cuts!
Earthship has been built as a working example of sustainability to encourage positive behaviour change about environmental choices we make as consumers. The tour was excellent with an engaging guide. Highlights for me were:
- The building uses 25% of the amount of water to normal, mainly based on how it is able to re-use water for different tasks.
- The building is completely off-grid, capturing rainwater into 20,000 lite tanks and generating electricity from solar panels and a wind turbine.
- The ‘porch’ is really a green house.
- That the guide highlighted easy ways for anyone to get started on the road to improved sustainability:
- When your boiler next breaks look for a replacement biomass boiler – it may even be able to provide the heat for two buildings from one boiler.
- Solar water heating is a quick and effective win, even in our UK climate.
- Use waste car tyres (stuffed with chalk or other local material) as the retaining walls in your next gardening project.
I recommend a you go on a visit or tour of your nearest Earthship (over 2,000 exist worldwide): http://earthship.com/current-projects-and-events