Taos Earthships: Sustainable Living in New Mexico’s Desert

Posted on September 14, 2025November 5, 2025 by jim

The Taos Earthships are a community of homes built in a sustainable style referred to as an Earthship outside of Taos, New Mexico.
An architect began designing and building these structures in the 1970s as a sustainable building method using recycled materials.
The other unique thing about their construction is that they are all completely off-grid. No city water, no city sewer, and no grid-tied electricity to be found.
A massive dirt berm constructed with recycled tires helps to keep the temperature moderate – warm in the winter and cool in the summer.
Huge greenhouse windows help to grow food indoors year-round, and water is reused to minimize waste.
The roofs catch water and direct it into cisterns, where it is filtered and used for drinking and bathing.
Grey water from dishes and bathing then goes to irrigate the greenhouse, and the water from this is then reused to flush toilets.
Black water from the toilet then goes to an outdoor septic system where it is filtered into the soil much like a conventional septic system in a rural home.
One other obvious quirk is the use of recycled bottles and cans in the walls to create sealed air gaps for insulation, while the bottles allow light to filter into the house.
This non-standard construction doesn’t come cheap, we saw a 1,200sqft earthship on Zillow for 365k, and a 2,000sqft one for 635k!
There are plenty of earthship videos on Youtube which offer an in-depth walkthrough of some of the homes.
Definitely worth a stop if you’re anywhere near Taos, you can wander around the front of the area for free, or pay for a tour of the Earthship Biotecture visitor center.
We only looked at the outside, but Shelby and Tom visited a week later and did the tour, and the last several photos here are from their visit.
They also offer a guided tour of multiple earthships, I believe that these must be scheduled well in advance.