Questions about sustainability of recycled architecture

Container residence (and photo) by LOT-EK

There's an interesting discussion going on in the comments of this post at Inhabitat and at Archinect about repurposing shipping containers as housing construction materials. Some folks find the resulting homes ugly; others suspect they're unsustainable. You can learn about other container projects at Brand Avenue. Check out the articles and join the conversation.

Of course, you need not live in a shipping container in order to live in repurposed housing. Recycled housing has a long history in the West. Take, for example, the case of three or four emergency shacks from the 1906 San Francisco quake that were combined into a single home, or, in a more extreme case, earthships, whose residents pledge to live very lightly on the earth:

Earthships are built from eco-friendly and recycled materials. Photo by Sproston Green.

Would you live in a repurposed container? An earthship? If you're not willing or able to go to such extremes, in what ways might you use recycled materials in your own home?