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Shipping container homes are also eco-friendly, especially if you use recycled shipping containers to build your home. There millions of shipping containers around the world that have been used for only a couple of cargo trips and are now sitting unused and abandoned. Taking one of these shipping containers and turning it from an abandoned item into a home is not only a less expensive option, but also a benefit to the environment. Shipping containers also lend themselves well to sustainable living, even off-the-grid living. Solar panels can be easily installed on the roofs, the containers can be insulated to be energy-efficient, and the small size of the containers makes them particularly suitable for energy-efficient appliances and other fixtures.
Shipping container homes are environmentally friendly. There are nearly 11 million abandoned shipping containers around the world, so turning one into a home is a great way to use resources that would otherwise go unused. Why are these containers abandoned? Not because there’s anything wrong with them. It’s a simple matter of dollars and cents. After companies ship their goods in the containers, it often is more expensive to ship back the empty container for reuse than it would be just to buy a new one. The unused containers that aren’t recycled in some way are typically melted down, which, of course, requires a lot of energy and generates a lot of pollution. When you recycle a used shipping container and turn it into your home, you are preventing the use of that energy and that pollution, and saving money at the same time.
Shipping container homes are eco-friendly in another important way. Assuming you keep your home fairly small, and assuming you take the steps to insulate it (which I highly recommend, as you will later read), living in a shipping container home requires little energy use and is very sustainable. Small shipping container homes have smaller footprints, require less maintenance and energy, require less alteration of the surrounding environment, and minimize the waste of resources compared to traditional homes.
