Garbage Warrior

 So, Garbage Warrior is an amazing movie! And for this blog post I’m going to teach my viewers what the movie was about and what I learned from it. The main idea of this documentary centers on the main character, Mike, and his desire to steer mankind –which he refers to as metaphorical buffalo- away from a very steep cliff.

So who is Mike? Well, Mike builds self-sustainable homes from items such as bottles, tires, cans, and glass. The idea that people can live in the houses that he builds and literally pay nothing, amazes him, in fact, they can even harvest their own food and never have the need to leave home. Interestingly enough, Mike takes advantage of many energy sources that are necessary for life, such as thermal energy, solar energy, maximum sunlight exposure, and water infiltration. As you can imagine, these houses that Mike and his crew build have very interesting designs, and they’re always referred to as works in progress, due to the fact that they’re all trial runs and experiments.

Eventually, these buildings that Mike calls “earth ships” become very popular, and he begins to receive an endless amount of calls from people who want them to build earth ships for them, or even in some cases, earth communities. This gave Mike an idea, and from that point on he began creating his own earth community. Eventually, his company got shut down for violating architect subdivisions –namely expensive ones- such as not having adequate roads and services. In turn, Mike’s credentials and license were revoked. Due to Mike’s passion and love for protecting the environment, he decided to do everything he could to make his buildings legal, regardless of the fact that it was corporate America who shut him down.

So what did he have to do? Well, Mike had to become a legal subdivision, therefore, he was required to pay thousands of dollars for people to draw useless diagrams, and in some cases, he had to pay thousands for people to just walk around and pick up arrowheads. After an endless amount of ridiculous requests, Mike took this fight to the state, instead of the county. Mike then drafted a new law to allow for easier testing of sustainable buildings. After he drafted the law, he went around and tried proposed the draft to hundreds of committee members and lawyers. This part of the documentary was really amazing, as it demonstrated Mike completely out of his element, but it showed how much will power he had to accomplish what he believed in. So, after proposing the bill, and redrafting it over, and over, and over again, he finally met with one representative who understood his concerns, and redrafted the law with him. After she helped him rewrite the bill, she went around to every representative, and actually got four other representatives to agree, in the end, they got out to judiciary by 9 to 2, but the bill actually died out from filibustering.

So this is where the documentary really gets good, Mike and his 7 man crew respond to help victims of a tsunami that hit the Andaman Islands. Once they arrived, they began to make self-sustainable buildings for the survivors; buildings that required no maintenance, and that could withstand massive storms and earthquakes. In fact, they buildings made it so the people no longer needed a water well, as the building would catch the water itself. In the end the local architects began to love these useful designs, and they adopted the techniques that Mike and his crew used, which was odd, because it took 14 days for an undeveloped country in a disaster to adopt this idea, but its taken over 3 years for a developed country like the U.S to even consider it.

After that major storm event, in 2006, New Mexico re-presented Mike’s bill, then on February of that year, his second attempt to introduce new legislation failed. This was huge for Mike, in his eyes the American dream went down the toilet. Then, once again, another storm event occurred, this time it was hurricane Rita. Once again, Mike and his crew responded to make earth ships for the survivors. This is when Mike heard the news, the U.S. board of architects learned about Mikes work in the Andaman Islands, and they invited him to reapply for his architect license. In the end, Mikes test site law was finally approved by the state legislature.

If you can’t already tell, this documentary is an amazing story about a man and his dream to help the environment, and in the end, his good will and passion is what allowed his dreams to come true. Mike never gave up, and watching this movie and all of his reactions to some of the unfortunate events is really nothing but mind-numbing. It just goes to show much self-sustainable buildings are to people, and the environment. After all, if these earth ships can change the minds of corporate Americans, then they can do anything.