Fortunately in the Caribbean shipping containers are not abundant.

However today, there are roughly 36 million shipping containers in the world. And on any given day, there are between five and six million shipping containers on the high seas, transporting everything from chips to dishwashers. That adds up to approximately 120 million containers packed with cargo traversing the oceans every year, with an estimated value of more than $4 trillion (based on 2013 figures).

However, costs of shipping empty containers back to their origin are high, so often times the containers sit unused in ports. If one lives near a port with abundant containers, then the energy required to transport the steel container to a local building site will be lower than an inland location, far from the port. Today, it would just be cheaper to have your goods shipped in a brand new container, especially given the trade deficit.

Whilst you could argue that melting down the shipping container and recasting the steel into something else is more environmentally friendly, you would be wrong. Recasting steel requires an incredible amount of energy and it isn’t financially viable- this is why there are so many abandoned shipping containers in the world. For each recycled shipping container we are reusing around 3,500kg worth of steel.

Melting these containers uses about 8000 kWh of energy, while refurbishing one into a building uses just about 400 kWh. In fact, hundreds of thousands of containers sit unused in big ship yards around the world. This is why our partner HoomStreet convert shipping containers into Eco Homes for people!