Empowering Native Americans with Earthbags

The Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota is documented as being the poorest place in this country. People freeze to death each year from hypothermia, starve to death and Pine Ridge is documented as having the shortest life expectancy rate for any community anywhere in the western hemisphere next to Haiti. A group calling themselves … Read more

Earthbags for Yurt and Tent Insulation

One possible use of earthbags I haven’t seen so far is using bags of vermiculite, perlite, scoria or pumice for insulating yurts, tents and other dwellings.  Kelly Hart used scoria-filled bags on his domes, and we’ve discussed ceiling insulation previously, but I’m talking about stacking (free standing) bags inside of a structure for wall insulation. … Read more

Why is there a Housing Crisis?

The UN estimates 1.2 billion people lack adequate shelter and over one hundred million are homeless. Why is this happening when the solution is readily apparent and well proven? The answer lies in using locally available, natural building materials to construct affordable housing. Highly processed modern materials are not affordable for the masses and carry … Read more

16 Videos about Earthbag Building ready to View

We have added a new feature to www.earthbagbuilding.com: videos! Once we realized how many really informative and entertaining short video programs can be viewed through YouTube.com, we did a thorough scouring of related titles to select only the best for our website. While there are some videos that are merely promotional in nature, or are … Read more

The Broken Earth Foster Village

James and Suzanne McConnell, co-founders of The Foster Village, are creating a self sustaining earthbag eco-pueblo pilot program for foster teenagers near Ojo Caliente, NM.  Children living full time in an eco-pueblo along with their visiting parents, when appropriate, will work side-by-side, interacting and caring for animals, gardening, building earthbag domes, milking goats, making cheese … Read more