The hotel chain Travelodge is trying something new in the proliferation of their already cookie-cutter hotels. They just built a 120-bedroom hotel in Uxbridge, England using old shipping containers. It proved to be 40-60% quicker to build, with 70% less on-site waste than other building methods, and they were so charmed by the ease of it, a 307-room shipping-crate-based hotel in Heathrow is underway.

The downside of the reusable shipping crate method for modern hotels is, you losing all the architectural flare and personality of their original construction (just kidding). The upshots, of course, include 1) environmental responsibility, 2) financial efficiency, 3) mad Green cred, and 4) the ten million pounds (aka 18.6 million dollars) they're set to save. Sounds like a livable compromise between building more ugly buildings and not immediately contributing to the swift demise of planet earth.

Via Inhabitat