One company uses a giant 3D printer to prefabricate studios off-site. Image by Mike Royer.
There’s a small granny flat in Fox Hills in the southern part of Culver City. The house is white, modern, and has two glass walls. One of the solid walls curves to become the roof. It’s the 350 square foot studio model. Its construction created nearly no waste.
The company behind it: Mighty Buildings. It is one of several companies in California trying to make housing construction more affordable by prefabricating or manufacturing homes off-site. It is similar to the model of mass producing cars.
MORE U.S. landfills are expected to fill up in 15 years, according to Waste Business Journal. Photo by Pixabay.
The average American throws away nearly five pounds of trash daily.
“Your whole life, you’re told, ‘You buy it, you use it, you throw it away,” says Richard Ludt, Director of Environmental Affairs at Interior Removal Specialist, Inc. “Well there’s no such place as away. Everything has to go someplace. There is an end-of-life cost to everything.”
“Away” can mean storm drains, oceans, the stomachs of marine animals, or a giant floating island of trash in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Even when the local solid waste infrastructure is working properly, “away” means a nearby landfill. But the average landfill in the United states will be full in the next 15 years.