A family of environmentalists struggles with daily realities while living in their dream home.

Paula Kinzer is a busy woman. After all, it takes serious effort to save the planet.

Paula has been dedicated to the environment since grade school, when she watched a reel-to-reel film about pollution in the Great Lakes.

In college, still passionately seeking solutions to an ailing planet, she earned a degree in environmental studies.

She went on to a job at a recycling center. Still, day after day she watched landfills overflow with growing piles of potentially reusable refuse such as tires and aluminum cans. Even in her own home, she saw waste. She was desperate for a viable solution.

She found the answer in a book called Earthship: How to Build Your Own.

An Earthship is an environmentally sustainable home built with recycled tires and aluminum cans. The design facilitates living "off-grid"—independent of conventional power lines and sewer systems—which reduces energy use, thus minimizing the negative impact on the environment.

Paula and her husband Kevin, a contractor, saw building an Earthship as an opportunity to combine their respective passions: the environment and construction.

They chose a location on a hill near Bend, Oregon, a city known for its sun, and began to build. Nine years ago, Paula and Kevin moved into a hollow skeleton of stacked black tires without lighting or plumbing. They kept working.

Today, the Kinzer Earthship is almost complete. Unlike the other homes nearby, which stand tall and angular, their home is half buried, its sandy-colored adobe walls blending into the surrounding hillside. Large slanted windows line the building's south side to maximize sun exposure and heat the earth-filled tires hidden beneath the adobe.

Standing in the sunlit kitchen of her home—one of the first of its kind in the state—Paula sees the project as a reflection of their ideals.

"This is the way we want our future to be," she says. "We want to see resources left for our kids. We want to see a clean planet and trees and beautiful spaces. We don't want to waste it all away."

But for the Kinzers, the Earthship ideal has proven different from the Earthship reality—especially while raising children.

In a home designed to use composting toilets, rainwater harvesting devices and solar power, accomplishing day-to-day tasks can be a challenge.

While the Kinzers have tried to stay true to the Earthship concept, logistics have hindered their progress. Six-year-old Jacob and four-year-old Quinn mean more loads of laundry, more gas-guzzling car trips into town and more solar power consumption. The prescribed composting toilets that convert excrement into usable compost drained too much of their limited solar power, so they opted for low-flush toilets. City codes required that they filter their gray water—used water from faucets and showers—deep into soil, offering little nourishment for plants. They attempted to catch rainwater, but a leak in their roof forced them to postpone that idea.

Despite the setbacks, the Kinzers strive to live out their convictions in their daily routine. They own a dryer, but Paula makes a conscious effort not to use it unless pressed for time. In the main hallway of their home, kitchen towels and child-sized pajamas hang from sagging clotheslines. They have a refrigerator, but in the winter Paula uses her "outside refrigerator," the shaded underside of the deck, to keep food—such as pots of turkey soup—cold. They also have a dishwasher, but they wash most of their dishes by hand.

"I don't think people need to look at alternative living as a sacrifice," says Paula Kinzer.

"Convenience is not as high a priority for me," Paula says. "To take a few extra minutes now so that my kids can have a healthy planet is worth it. They'll appreciate that a lot more than they will anything else."

Nonetheless, Paula is matter-of-fact in her assessment of the differences between the book's portrayal and reality.

"It's so pie-in-the-sky that you just get the perfect image," she says. "It's easy to overlook the headaches."

One headache they chose to alleviate was an unreliable generator, which they used as a backup to their twelve photovoltaic solar panels.

"Being off-grid is really a fabulous feeling," Paula says, "until you have to start up your generator."

Tired of the hassle and unexpected power surges from their backup energy source, the Kinzers connected to the city's electrical grid three years ago. Now, all they have to do is flip a switch and their power changes from solar to grid.

Still, Paula and Kevin make frequent visits to the small electrical room just off the kitchen to monitor their power levels, though they worry less since making the switch. Even in the dead of winter the family uses only 112 kilowatts of grid electricity per month—about 90 percent less than a conventional home of the same size.

Paula continues to do the bulk of her energy-dependent work during the day, when the sun is out. She and Kevin know that if they organized their energy use perfectly, they would rely only on solar power. Yet they take comfort in knowing that they can use the microwave or the television or run an emergency load of laundry after the sun goes down.

The switch to city power also allows for Paula's favorite indulgence: the five-minute shower she cannot bring herself to shorten.

More power also means there's energy for Jacob to set new records on his Hot Wheels computer game or for Quinn to use a nightlight at bedtime.

Aside from those daily luxuries, living in an Earthship gives the children opportunities to learn small lessons about the environment almost every day. They know where their water comes from because their mother shows them: from the kitchen's cistern, through the shiny copper tubes along the ceiling and into the toilets, showers and faucets. They also know to resist the urge to play in the indoor planters so that they don't hurt the towering tangerine tree, tomato plants or blooming flowers that flourish in the sunlight. And if they're patient, they can see the planters' wandering toads snacking on spiders and flies.

Paula and Kevin learn lessons, too. In their own company, EcoCents Consulting, they explore alternative solutions to conventional home waste. Paula also works with the local school district, showing officials ways to reduce their waste. The family gives tours of their home to people who are interested in eco-friendly lifestyles.

"Being off-grid is really a great feeling," Paula says, "until you have to start up the generator."

"I don't think people need to look at alternative living as a sacrifice," she says. "It's all an experiment and people shouldn't be so locked into thinking that conventional is safe."

Never one to settle for the comforts of the conventional, Paula still finds time for home improvements. The failed rainwater collecting system is next on the list. She expects to have it up and going just in time for autumn's rains. n