An off-the-grid community in New Mexico offers insight into sustainable building [Video]

Near the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in Taos, New Mexico, a community built into the earth is living totally off-the-grid in mostly-recycled structures called Earthships.

ABC News Chief Meteorologist and Chief Climate Correspondent Ginger Zee along with her team, Dan Manzo and Lindsey Griswold, traveled to Taos to stay with the community and find out what everyone can be doing to live a bit more sustainably.

“Everybody on the planet can wake up in the morning and be comfortable without fossil fuel. Everybody can grow food in their house, everybody can have electricity from the sun and wind,” Michael Reynolds, founder and creator of Earthship Biotecture, told Zee. “These buildings do that.”

Heating, cooling and powering buildings creates more greenhouse gas emissions than anything else in the U.S., according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Furthermore, construction and demolition create more than 500 million tons of debris each year in this country alone, the EPA said.

The community of …