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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

‘Green’ looks at an eco-visionary

Jerry Schwartz Associated Press

You have to be a little crazy to tilt at windmills – or sometimes, just to build them.

Meet Michael Reynolds, who has been raising hell and building what he calls “earthships” in the Taos, N.M., desert for more than three decades.

With his long, gray hair, salty language and almost surreal single-mindedness, Reynolds is a larger-than-life man of eco-action.

He believes he is here to save the Earth – if only out of self-interest.

“I feel I’m in a herd of buffalo, and they’re all stampeding toward a 1,000-foot drop-off,” he says. “If humanity takes the planet down the tubes, I’m dead.”

Reynolds is the star of the documentary “Garbage Warrior,” which helps open the second season of Sundance’s “The Green” tonight.

“The Green” is much the same as last year – a weekly Tuesday night block of programming focused on the environment.

Hosted by journalist Simran Sethi and community advocate Majora Carter, it includes a half-hour show, “Big Ideas for a Small Planet,” as well as short, interstitial pieces about ecology.

It also offers longer documentaries like “The Nuclear Comeback,” about renewed interest in nuclear power; “The Greening of Southie,” a look at the construction of Boston’s first green residential building; and “Escape from Suburbia,” examining the Americans lifestyle in an age of rising prices and declining oil supplies.

“Garbage Warrior’s” Reynolds started out as a classically trained architect, but he didn’t want to build little houses made of ticky-tacky; he wanted to build houses out of beer cans. So he moved to New Mexico, and did just that.

The walls of Reynolds’ organic-looking houses are filled with detritus – cans, tires packed with dirt, plastic and glass bottles.

The walls absorb heat from sunlight in the winter, and insulate against the heat of summer. Windows are strategically placed and adjustable to modulate sunlight; solar panels and wind turbines generate electricity. Rainwater is captured; wastewater is filtered and reused. Greenhouse areas are used to grow food.

The aim is to make the people who live in these houses self-sufficient.

“You can get up in the morning and you own your own life. You don’t have to do anything,” Reynolds says.

He takes his magic to Asia, to show people left homeless by the 2004 earthquake and tsunami that they can use garbage to build houses. And he takes it to Mexico, to help victims of Hurricane Rita in 2005.