Ecopods: Shipping Container Housing Available Now
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto 
on 09.22.08
Dwight Doerkson has developed "an affordable eco friendly building that’s transportable and doesn’t need to be hooked up to the grid"- out of shipping containers. He cuts out an entire wall and hinges it, so when you want to leave your ecopod you simply flip a switch and a solar powered winch pulls up the deck and closes up the box.
The floors are recycled rubber, the walls are FSC birch ply over a bio-based green foam insulation, the optional toilet is composting and fridge is solar powered.
From their website: "The eco-pod began its life as a shipping container, hence its sturdy, engineered form and tight weather seal. The imbalance of goods traveling from East to West has created a surplus of these in North America, which means that the purchase price is a fraction of the original manufacturing cost - this saving is then passed on to you, the 'end user'. The process of recycling can itself require a huge amount of energy, although in this case we are working within the parameters of what exists already, so again less energy consumed means both lower production costs and a much smaller 'carbon footprint.'"
"We wanted to go even further with this ethos, so we incorporated rubber flooring recycled from shredded car tires into the design as well as an entire range of off-grid options including a solar-powered refrigerator, XM radio and 12V lighting and wall outlets powered from a roof-mounted solar panel. Even the composting toilet requires very little maintenance and costs a fraction of the traditional septic bed system."
Interview of Dwight Doerkson
Units start at about $40,000 and being shipping containers, can go anywhere. ::ecopods
More Shipping Container Prefab in TreeHugger:
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As good as the off-grid solar-powered idea sounds, I'd hate to think what would happen to the solar-powered fridge when you hit a few consequtive days of rain/cloudy weather.
By reducing dwelling size, super-insulating same, using solar fed LED lights, solar refrigeration in modest practical fridges, microwave cooking techniques, using ground heat, windmills, and passive solar technologies, my dreams of a "zero running cost, zero upkeep dwelling" are shifting from an unrealistic dream to a practical reality. Combined with gray water/rainwater conservation systems, composting toilets, fast growing bug proofed, disease proofed GMO'ed veggies in an attached greenhouse, mega-composting and some aquaculture for fish protein for a better diet, we have a survival system based on current technologies feeding the masses including retired folk with limited incomes - no hardship necessary! Science will save us from destructive forces of the great depression we are going to suffer, the "family Farm" was refuge in the Dirty Thirties, it no longer exists! Technology will save us this time! Super efficient solar cells will pave the way. We will need power for our lighting, cooking, cell phones, computers, and solar cells will provide most of it - free!
I have one of those solar refrigerators and they work great. We ran ours on a single charged battery with no solar hook-up and it went for three weeks before it couldn't maintain temperature. I figure you could run it pretty well indefinitely with at a temperature around plus 1 – 2c. It need to work a little harder in hot weather.