Shipping containers make one of the best eco-green structures. Luckily, they’re also easy to find, durable, portable and easy to relocate, and less expensive to place and maintain than many traditional building materials. Read on for five reasons you should consider using repurposed shipping containers for your modular housing, shipping container office, storage needs, and a host of other uses.

1. Shipping containers give you lots of room to work with. The standard, 20-foot container has 1,150 cubic feet of space. The higher 40-foot container offers 2,700 cubic feet of room: enough to store 8,443 shoe boxes. If you plan on living in the space or using it as an office, you’ll get about 300 feet of space for a 40-foot container. They’re also modular and easily stackable. In fact, you could put four of them together and have an inexpensive, durable, and eco-friendly 1,200 square foot home with three bedrooms!
2. Shipping containers are easy to get and easy on the environment. Experts estimate that we currently have 24 million retired and unused containers of this sort. These sorts of industrial shipping containers are made from 85% recycled steel. If they are demolished, they can be completely recycled, but using them for something saves 8000 kWh of energy for a 40-foot container that would otherwise be needed to melt it down. Making a structure from a shipping container uses less material and between 35% and 40% less waste than structures of the same size made with traditional materials.
3. Shipping container structures can be cost-effective. Estimates from some experts suggest that structures made from building containers can be as much as 40% cheaper than those made traditionally. Part of the savings is simply in time. Putting up a container structure can be done in a fifth of the time it takes to make a traditional structure. A house or office typically takes two or three weeks to set up. Making that same building from brick and mortar would take four to six months.
4. Shipping containers are safe and durable. The average shipping container can last for 25 years without very little maintenance. These durable structures are also capable of standing up to 100 mph winds when they are on a foundation. Connect them to pylons and they can withstand wind forces up to 175 mph.

Shipping containers can make affordable and durable homes, storage spaces, offices, job site trailers, shops, or even pop-up cafes and restaurants. They can be designed in any way you can dream, or simply stacked or lined up for maximum efficient use of space. Whatever you need a structure for, consider how shipping container solutions could be the answer you’re looking for.