Garbage Warrior

Michael Reynolds is a long-haired, wild-eyed maverick architect, and Garbage Warrior presents him in a warts-and-all fashion. Reynolds, who designs sustainable housing, initially comes across as just another aging hippie, and when he shows off the houses he builds out of old beer cans and rubber tires, it s easy to dismiss him -- been there, smoked that -- as a passe boomer. One of the great delights of Garbage Warrior is the way it lets Reynolds genius sneak up on you, allowing him to win you over the way he eventually wins over everyone he encounters. This documentary, which concerns Reynolds vision for sustainable housing and his efforts to spread the good word about it, begins in a laid-back community in New Mexico. Here, Reynolds talks about his theories and shows some of the dwellings he s built out of throw-away items. These houses really are completely self-sufficient, with power, water and sewage all taken care of under one roof, via sun, rain and wind. The buildings near Taos are all built by Reynolds and his gang of builders, and the dwellings vary in looks between whimsical and wacky. Since Reynolds has been at this for about 35 years, an entire community has sprung up around him. Reynolds is genuinely concerned about the future of the planet, and he long ago set out to build a house where people could thrive off the grid. No mortgage, no utility bills, no food shopping. For a decade, he and his cronies built dwellings near Taos, learning from their mistakes and improving as they built. Sometimes roofs leaked. One house had too much sun and too much heat ( I m just glad I didn t fry a baby or something. ) Another was plagued by sewage disposal problems. In time, they created houses where people could use sun and rain for power and water and grow their own food. The results for Reynolds hard work? Lawsuits, getting his architect s licence revoked, plenty of government red tape. Nonetheless, the man s enthusiasm and his energy are daunting, and it s only too bad it took global catastrophe to bring suitable attention to his work. After the 2004 tsunami, he was invited by Indian authorities to build some of his sustainable dwellings for survivors on the Andaman Islands. With their wells full of salt water, the locals learned from Reynolds a simple solution: How to build a roof that collects rain water. (Reynolds calls his creations earth ships and he built more in 2006 after Hurricane Rita hit Mexico.) Garbage Warrior starts off like a feel-good Beach Boys song, but it ends up as a symphony. Reynolds is a genius whose enthusiasm has influenced a lot of people for positive change -- even politicians. Garbage Warrior was filmed over three years in the U.S., India and Mexico, and it s a terrific introduction not only to Reynolds work, but to the extraordinary political and economic hurdles facing anyone who hopes to make positive change. An Inconvenient Truth outlines the problem; Garbage Warrior offers some solutions. You should probably see them both. Soon.