“I’m trying to save my ass,” Mike Reynolds says in the opening moments of Garbage Warrior, a superb chronicle of his 30-year quest to bring sustainable housing construction into the mainstream, or at least closer in from the fringes. “That’s a powerful force.” Reynolds, a wunderkind architect and engineer who builds self-reliant “earthships” from the oddly indestructible detritus of an industrial civilization – old tires and plastic bottles are among his most useful materials – believes that life as we know it will disappear within decades as cities (“dangerous areas of chaos that can’t support themselves any longer”) crumble and their former occupants spill outward, either to learn to sustain themselves or to perish. But he’s doing what he can to push us towards the former outcome.

The early sections of Oliver Hodge’s engrossing film – which made its U.S. debut at SILVERDOCS last night — focus on Reynolds’ remarkable achievements in the Taos, NM community where he has refined, through trial and error, his techniques of building homes (including his own) that offer their inhabitants warmth through winters where the mercury can sink to 30 below zero, relief from the heat in the summer, clean water, and sewage services, all entirely off-grid.