General Motors’ Detroit Hamtramck Assembly plant has teamed up with Detroit non-profit group Michigan Urban Farming Initiative to help build the city’s first homestead made from a shipping container. The 40-foot long, eight-foot wide and 10-foot tall container home will be built on MUFI’s plot of land in Detroit to demonstrate the effectiveness of reused material on dwellings oriented towards urban agriculture.
The home will be constructed from 85 percent scrap materials donated by GM and will be built in part by employee volunteers. Many of the materials used to build the home, which will include 320 square feet of living space with two bedrooms, a bathroom and a kitchen, will be scrap materials from the Detroit Hamtramck assembly plant. Some of these repurposed materials include sound-deadening vehicle insulation to insulate the walls and small fastener containers to be used as plant/vegetable starter containers. Wood pallets and other scrap wood will also be reused to build furniture, including a table and bed frame.
“This innovative project allows our facility to give back even more and be an integrated community partner while reusing materials that would otherwise be discarded,” Doneen McDowell, Detroit-Hamtramck plant manager, said in a statement. “MUFI’s plan to reinvent urban agriculture is a creative approach that helps Detroit’s renaissance in a sustainable, efficient manner.”
A university student caretaker will live in the shipping container home year-round and will manage the farm while using the land for agricultural research activities
“The home really started as a long-term vision, said Darin McLeskey, MUFI co-founder and vice president. “With Detroit-Hamtramck and the GM Foundation’s help, the reality of a home made from recycled and reused materials on vacant land is sustainable for Detroit, or any big city in the midst of a comeback. We hope this project serves as a source of inspiration and demonstration for many other similar housing types throughout the city.”
The General Motors Foundation helped make the project possible through its annual Plant City Grants program. The GM Foundation says it will provide more than $1.7 million in funding through the program this year to 209 organizations in different 45 cities where GM employees live and work.
Comments
Coming soon, the Affordable Housing Act. Failure to buy one of these will result in a tax… erm, penalty.
Haha…And so true.
And that home will cost $500 million and the lights won’t work and probably no running water…but it will have a fancy-looking Web site!
Amazing, a company that produces scrap can make something from scrap. They truly are North Americas largest scrap dealer.
Nothing new as Henry Ford made floors for the Model T from engine shipping crates and Kingsford Charcoal from other scrap wood that they used in the plants.
Besides it will provide more kindling for Halloween fires in Detroit.
The future of mankind, due to the fact of man being unable to control population.
The Chinese didn’t limit couples to one baby because they wanted to. The Chinese are also the biggest recyclers in the world. On both accounts… they have crossed humanities population Rubicon… They have no choice, they have to.
A warning to us, and like this futuristic house, truly a glimpse of the future.
The vast majority of land in this country is sitting unused and ripe for development. You could fit this entire country’s population into the state of Texas and provide each individual with more living space than this “project.”
People in developed countries need to move to find work today. They don’t need to be crammed into a storage shed. The notion that we’re running out of resources, or that China’s motivations are not self-serving communism at its finest, are not backed up by reality.
Your reality, is an opinion.
Put the entire population into Texas, confined to the resources of Texas, and see how long the resources of food, water, timber, and minerals are eaten up.
I take it, that you’ve never been to Asia. Just be glad that you were not born in China. A street vendors delicacy is deep fried rat on a stick.
I am glad I was born in a country that doesn’t have a dictator-grade leadership, one that leaves people, as you put it, eating “deep fried rat on a stick.”
So thank you.
I fought 2 years, out of 4, in combat against a communist dictatorship; to help make sure that all of us remain free.
But it’s easy to make a judgment call. when you’re living in a land of plenty. Therefore; a tremendous responsibility lies within each one of us to be responsible. Over populating a given area, or state, is not being responsible to the ones who come after us.
“The notion that we’re running out of resources… are not backed up by reality.”
Really? So there will always be crude oil and coal? Willing to put money on it?
How many more Texas-sized nations would you need to sustain everyone crammed into Texas? How that pesky infrastructure you forgot about?
Anything to tie it to the communism hitch. As long as a communist country exist, you can always downplay the demand of resource depletion. Communist or not, even the Chinese know the definition of the word ‘finite’.
The reality and not opinion is we do have many of resources but there are those in our government now who are restricting them and preventing the use or transportation of them. These same leaders are also a$$ deep involved with the Carbon Exchange in Chicago.
The cold hard truth is there is a major force of people out there that would love to do nothing but cut America down to a limited country from a country with no limits. The scary part it is the damage is coming from within.
We have the whole Global Warming debate started by Maurice Strong who became a Billionaire over it and is now hiding in China.
They like to base global warming on the last 15 years with an increase in temp of .11 of a degree that is with in the fluctuation of the natural earth cycles. They post of a lot of scientist that claim it real but many of these folks are also getting government funding to debate it. If there is no warming the is no funding so what do you think these guys will say. There are just as many who are not getting funding that claim there is no warming.
Also we are basing older temps on recorded reports from ships logs as there was no official weather recording, Now how accurate do you think these sailors will be on temperatures while they were worried they would fall off the edge of the earth.
Are we out of room? Yes we are in LA or NY but we have plenty of great room else where. The air now is cleaner than it has been in 100 plus years. The key is to keep a good balance to where you can still be productive but also protect the land. It can be done and has been done. It is time to stop the alarmist and take a balanced approach.
The worst thing we have been doing is teaching people to depend on government. We have been for years a country where the government depended on the people not the reverse and we need to get back to that.
Lets face it we are being told we are doomed by some and these are the same SOB’s that claim we are going to die from Global warming but they can’t tell me what the weather is with 50% accuracy beyond 3 days.
While you make many good points Scott, there is the actual fact that China, India, and other countries like Haiti, have used the majority,or all, of their natural resources by being over populated. It’s an easy equation… more people, more hydrocarbons used.
I’ll leave the earth warming debate to others, but there are two empirical points that cannot be overlooked. The earth has been warming since the last ice age, and nations, around the globe, are dumping billions of tons of hydrocarbons into the air everyday… As a result of over population.
When nations over populate, and resources are scarce, bad things happen. They either try to colonize, state mandates of birth control, become dictatorships… Or violently take the land, and resources, of other nations.
This article, while unnecessary to some, should be yet another warning sign of a possible future. One thing is for certain, the first casualty of over population… is freedom.
I understand small rocky volcanic islands like Haiti have limited resources but they had little to start with. It is not that they have used the majority it is the fact they never really had any, As for population that is a human part and needs to be dealt with on the local level.
But on the other hand in places like North America we are far from over populated and far from using up all our resources. We need to manage them but we still need to use them.
To be honest we have managed them so well that we have much more forest and tree than we had in the late 1800’s. The earth regenerates many resources much faster than some would like to give credit. The greatest polluter of the earth is nature. More CO2 and other issues are natural and the earth reclaims it’s self. Just look at Mount St Helens where they said it would be lost for centuries and today it is back like it was never expected.
http://www.inquisitr.com/1234575/nasa-scientist-global-warming-is-nonsense/
The term ‘climate change’ is meaningless. The Earth’s climate has been changing since time immemorial, that is since the Earth was formed 1,000 million years ago. The theory of ‘man-made climate change’ is an unsubstantiated hypothesis [about] our climate [which says it] has been adversely affected by the burning of fossil fuels in the last 100 years, causing the average temperature on the earth’s surface to increase very slightly but with disastrous environmental consequences. The theory is that the CO2 emitted by burning fossil fuel is the ‘greenhouse gas’ causes ‘global warming’ — in fact, water is a much more powerful greenhouse gas and there is 20 time more of it in our atmosphere (around one per cent of the atmosphere) whereas CO2 is only 0.04 per cent. There is no reproducible scientific evidence CO2 has significantly increased in the last 100 years. Anecdotal evidence doesn’t mean anything in science, it’s not significant…”
As for over population much of it is due to better health and care. People used to die at 30 years old and today we are disappointed not to get to 85 in most countries including many 3rd world.
The climate can change nearly over night with one large volcanic explosion. [Note magma is growing at St Helens again]
Also the population could drop a lot over a year just with a simple flu or major war both of which are very possible.
The bottom line is no matter what man does the earth has the ability to adjust and survive in spite of man. It is like many who are out looking for life on other planets. They can not even locate a microbe to this point of life. I know it is a large universe but you would think someone would grasp the earth is different for a reason greater than all of us.
To get so much right in one place at one time in a universe so vast is a little against the odds. Also how many times the earth has taken devastation hits and come back. Life on this plant has changed several times but there has always been life.
The green industry is just that a green industry. I believe we should be good stewards of the planet but we should not stop advancements of life and industry. While industry has done things wrong they also have done things that have made this a better place too.
The key to the future is good management but not stopping advancements. The earth will continue to thrive and survive in spite of man as she is much more powerful than us.
I don’t have an argument with much of the positions you have laid out. The key element of agreement, is balance. The element we may disagree on, is whether we are being balanced in our present approach to the harvesting, refining, manufacturing, and using our natural resources wisely. As a world wide responsibility… I don’t think we are. Yes, in the states/north America, and Europe, efforts for harvesting, and production, of natural elements are somewhat responsible, but there is little responsibility being shown in the rest of the world. As I said in the beginning… if we are not wise, and as you say good stewards, this article is a small warning for what can happen. As it stated on the frieze of the Oracle of Delphi… “Nothing in excess.”
As for your example of Haiti… Before the Europeans, and Africans, the squirrels did not have to touch the ground, if they traveled from one coast the the other on the island of Hispaniola. Today, there is barely a tree left in Haiti. It is a fact that the Haitians cut down the trees for fuel and warmth. In other words… The needs of an overpopulated territory, out weighed the ability of nature, to regenerate in balance.
Part of the argument coming from one side, Is that we need fossil fuels. I agree, but when it comes to getting and using said fuel, it must be done responsibly. If we don’t, the effects of harmful pollution, will far outweigh the benefits of immediate gratification. Example… If the Key Stone pipeline skirted the Ogallala Aquifer, and the farmers/ native Americans were guaranteed, that they would not be financially responsible for spills, clean ups, and compensated appropriately… No problem, but that’s not the present scenario. I live very close to the Kalamazoo river, where a Canadian sand oil pipe line burst in the river. The river is one river tributary to Lake Michigan. Cities, towns, on the shores and inland, and around Lake Michigan get their drinking water from the big lake. It’s a fact that they can never totally clean up the harmfull chemicals out of the river, or the lake.
Scott… tell me… what’s more important… Fresh water, or oil?
A good steward?… maybe a better steward than many… but not a good steward.
Water is great but we can not live on could and would.
If the keystone pipe line is not done then how many spills from rail accidents and truck accidents will spread over a even greater area. We heard the same arguments on how the Alaskan pipe line was going to kill all the animals and their habitat in Alaska, Well how many years later the impact has been minimal in most areas and even more positive in others.
The key here is the risk vs. the gains. If you do nothing will be accomplished. If you do something there is always a risk but often it can be managed.
Also never can be totally cleaned is not generally true in most cases and while some may take time the earth does recover much faster than some would like credit.
As for Haiti you are dealing with a 3rd world country with little management of anything, They are often just victims of their own actions. This is common in these places and while we can try to help for the most part they will continue to do as they like. We can not tell them to stop populating, We can not stop them from cutting trees and we can give them all the education and money in the world and odds are that will not change much. Pretty much that is what is going on now in many of these counties and today it has not really changed much.
You do what you can where you can and try to manage what you have with the calculated risk vs. loss and go on.
Nothing ventured nothing gained.
Right now with the closing of the coal fired electric plants in about half the country we are going to pay a great price for it. You can not remove that much and not replace it with out devastating issues for a period of time till you can replace them. Then what do you do Nuclear? What do you do with the fall out from that. Is it better or worse than the shoot that do few even notice or has much effect on anything? A lot of this comes down to lobbyist in Washington and who is taking whose money vs. reality.
Nixon wanted to punish Canada, for not supporting us in Vietnam war, and giving asylum to draft dodgers. That’s why the pipeline terminates in Anchorage. It also led to one of the biggest oil spills, on one of the biggest fishing grounds, in the world… the Exxon Valdez. I didn’t say I was against pipelines, I said, that the oil companies should be responsible for the spills, and that the pipelines should not cross water. I didn’t say I was against coal fired electrical generation, it lights up our house everyday.
By your words, The catastrophic ills that have befallen Haiti, is because they are a third world country. This insinuates that we are too intelligent for that to happen, but yet with our superior intellect, we keep repeating history. Besides unnecessary, and unpopular wars… We keep building on grounds that are fragile and potentially ruined by “accidents that can never happen”… The Titanic syndrome.
Your words have been implying, that you believe my conclusions, and therefore solutions, are the typical stereotype of… “he has got to be a statist, stained with statist solutions”… but I haven’t stated any solutions, and you haven’t asked any questions. Here are my solutions… education, tax incentives, along with tax discouragements… the good old Skinner Behaviorism, of carrot and stick.
If these solutions are not followed, (and they never have been), i don’t care how intelligent a state is… it will over populate, and then the tyrannical state, that none of us want, will mandate, by law and imprisonment, the amount of children a couple can have. Everyone can see what this Chinese solution has become… a male overpopulated state, which can afford to lose 40 million males and not affect their male, female balance. By our trade policies, the Chinese finally have a capital machine to lose millions of of their men, to take lebesraum they so desperately need by the good old tried and true method of… war. Over population does have consequences, and all of them are bad.
“Those who expect a country to remain ignorant and free, expect what never was, and never will be”… Thomas Jefferson.