Home Builder Turns Trash Into $10,000 Green Homes

Dan Phillips is one of the most unconventional home builders you'll ever find. In fact, he's more an ecological social messiah than a home builder (see video below). For $10,000, he builds affordable homes for low-income people that are attractive, energy-efficient and save landfills. Most builders purchase building materials -- piles of wood, sheet rock, nails, bricks, and tiles -- that are used in construction and then, when the house is finished, the waste is discarded to the dump. Phillips, 66, salvages those materials, hauling them from the trash or even picking them up on the road, to build or remodel homes for low-income buyers.

He says he's just doing what people have been doing for years -- using whatever they can scrounge up to to build shelter.

"And if you ponder what could be used," says the Huntsville, Tex., resident, "then building materials are everywhere."