Reduce, reuse, and recycle. We have written a lot about reducing and recycling but what about reusing? The City Center Lofts in Salt Lake City is sustainable building at its best. The developer, Adam Price has created an ingenious way to reuse shipping crates and actually make them into a cool dwelling. The lead architect, Adam Kalkin, on City Center Lofts was commissioned to create a condominium type dwelling on the former site of 337, a community project where 150 artists lent their expertise in “creating art” from or on a dilapidated building (337 was demolished yesterday). The new seven-story structure will be fashioned largely from recycled steel shipping containers, “those trailer-sized units that cross oceans on cargo ships and are stacked at ports and railroad yards around the world. Architects in the emerging field of shipping-container housing believe it will be the first building of its kind in Utah and the tallest such structure in the nation,” according to the Salt Lake City Tribune.

Why shipping containers? Because the United States imports more goods than it exports, and because it’s cheaper to manufacture new cargo containers overseas than send them back empty, millions of the surplus containers sit rusting in American shipyards. They are sold at scrap-steel prices - about $1,000-$3,000 apiece - which makes them affordable and environmentally friendly as construction materials, architects say.