SOLORZANO: Food: the house makes its own; fruits, vegetables, a pond of fish, the yard would have chickens. Temperature: several layers keep the interior a constant 72 degrees. Water: a system captures rain and reuses it for everything from showering to landscaping. The internal walls are made of tires filled with dirt.

And what does this do for heating and cooling?

REYNOLDS: Well, it’s massive, it’s on the order of mass is known in physics to hold temperature.

Freezer and refrigerator, all powered by the sun.

SOLORZANO: Flat-screen TV, high-speed Internet, four bedrooms, 6,000 square feet.

Mr. REYNOLDS: All without fuel. So the total utility bill for a home like this would be–well, it’s kind of unheard of, but $100 US per year.

MICHAEL BALASONE (Earthship Owner): These are our homegrown tomato plants.

SOLORZANO: Michael Balasone left his standard home to live in this two-story Earthship.

Tell me, you’ve been here almost a year, what is your utility bill?

BALASONE: So far, really none. We have a propane tank and it was mostly full when we got here and don’t expect to fill it for probably two more years.

SOLORZANO: Earthships aren’t only here in New Mexico; as the word has spread, people have had them built in every state in the US, and Earthships are being developed around the world.

From Japan to Bolivia, India and Spain, Reynolds and his team travel the globe, teaching this simple concept of building self-sustaining shelter.

REYNOLDS: With one person making dirt and he other one pounding it, it shouldn’t take anymore than 10 or 15 minutes to pound a tire, if that.

Every kind of person is wondering right now, `Am I going to be able to flush my toilet? Am I going to have power? Am I going to be able to keep my kids warm?’ I think it’s their birthright, I think that this is a direction that they can get it, a pretty low-tech way of getting it.

SOLORZANO: Now, building an Earthship, it costs really about the same amount as building the same home about the same size, but you have to imagine you’re not paying the utility bill. So that’s where people are saving all that money.

RODRIGUEZ: It can be a very attractive option. But it does seem so radical right now.

SOLORZANO: Right. I asked Reynolds that, what type of people are living in these homes? And he said that, really, you are getting that kind of hippie cult that was living–I don’t want to say cult, but that hippie group.

RODRIGUEZ: Mm-hmm.

SOLORZANO: But he says more and more people, more mainstream people are moving into these homes because they just want to save money.

RODRIGUEZ: Yeah. Being green was considered weird not too long ago, so who knows?