The United States as well as the world as a whole has a problem with shipping containers. While shipping containers are, to be sure, immensely useful in the transport of goods and products all throughout the entirety of the world, we simply have too much of them and they have begun to contribute to the growing waste problem that we face. In fact, only around five million to six million of seventeen million steel shipping containers in existence are actually used. The rest of them just sit around, taking up space. And as many as six hundred and seventy five such storage containers are actually lost at sea every single year, all around the world, further contributing to levels of pollution and the disturbance of the natural marine life in our oceans.

But shipping containers for sale could be a way to divert these unused shipping containers simply lying around the country, lying around the world, into a new and better use, giving them life long after they have fulfilled their original intended purpose. For one, used shipping containers can be used as office buildings once they have been refurbished and renovated. A shipping container is larger than many people realize or picture in their mind’s eye, typically as long as one thousand and three hundred feet and as wide as one hundred and eighty feet. Storage containers of these dimensions (or even those that are slightly smaller) can be stacked together and arranged to create commercial buildings as well as modular homes.

Shipping container buildings are ideal for a number of reasons. For one, they are particularly and incredibly long lasting for buildings made out of shipping containers. IN fact, they can be expected to last for twenty years or more, though the care that is given to the shipping container building must also be taken into the equation here. On top of this, they are easy to produce, as they require much less in the way of materials and manual labor to construct. This also makes them hugely environmentally friendly as not only are you recycling at least three thousand and five hundred kg of steel when you construct the typical shipping container building, but you are also limiting your use of resources such as bricks, mortar, and even wood.

And because these traditional building materials do not need to be used in any major way, construction work is much lesser than it would be at a traditional building site of a building of the same size as a shipping container home or office. Subsequently, storage container homes are far less expensive than your traditional home, and can provide a viable housing opportunity to those who would otherwise never have been able to afford a home to call their own. And though storage containers and storage container homes won’t last forever, their implementation and construction – and low selling price – has allowed many families as well as individuals get their feet under them.

Shipping container buildings can also be utilized as a temporary measure, such as when a school or a church is in the process of rebuilding or constructing a new location. Schools in particular often have too many students than they can handle, with no good place to put these students and provide them with the ideal education in. Shipping container buildings often provide the solution to this, allowing for extra classrooms to be constructed on the cheap while the school pools resources to expand the building and build a brand new school. Though these shipping container buildings are not necessarily ideal for the long term, they can help to provide the resources that are so desperately needed in the present, something that is often absolutely crucial and should not be overlooked.

Shipping containers are all too present in our world, and the world around us, but that does not mean that we cannot repurpose them as we should. Shipping container buildings can become a multitude of things, from homes for those who would otherwise not be able to afford them to office or school buildings.