LOW-TECH MAGAZINE

How Circular is the Circular Economy?

The circular economy – the newest magical word in the sustainable development vocabulary – promises economic growth without destruction or waste. However, the concept only focuses on a small part of total resource use and does not take into account the laws of thermodynamics.

How to make your own low-tech vertical farm

The ingenious low-cost vertical farms of Willem Van Cotthem are within reach of everybody.

Fighting marine debris: the dustcarts of the sea

Considering that the oceans hold more garbage than fish by now, this might be the right time to retrain our fishermen and let them hunt for litter. Several companies offer equipment to fish garbage out of rivers, lakes and harbours. They say they could build larger dustcarts for seas and oceans, too. Send the bill to the disposables industry - and let the cleanup begin.

Heat your house with car tyres and earth

Energy hungry America teaches the world how to build ecological houses.

A dirt cheap and 100 percent ecological house that has all the comforts of an ordinary home, without being connected to the electricity grid, waterworks, sewer system or the natural gas network. It does exist, but in most countries, building one is not allowed.

An Earthship is a completely self-sufficient house that has a natural temperature regulation, without the use of a heating system. The building also generates its own electricity, collects and filters its own drinking water and cleans its own effluent water. The house is partly buried into the earth and is constructed mainly with waste materials; car tyres, aluminium cans and glass bottles. This low-tech building approach is ecologically as well as economically advantageous.

This autumn, the British coastal city of Brighton approved the construction of 16 Earthships. It’s the first time that a European city council has given builders the green light to mass construct this radical ecological housing form. In the United States nearly one thousand Earthships have been built, most of them in the desert of New Mexico. (Pictures: Michael Reynolds)