Is there any alternative material that could replace or reduce the amount of timber we use?

You asked a question then changed your tune, which wasn’t done in a way that expressed you were getting what people took time to post in response to the OP. Your remaining question, as formatted, was loaded.

So, I am right to pepper in disclaimers and circle back to the OP.

This is GQ. We have standards.

This idea bugs me every time I read it. I’m not trying to single you out, Finagle, I just gotta point out:

(and I work in the plastics industry, so take my bias as it is)

No oil company drills for or pumps oil to make plastic. The money from oil comes from making fuel. The building blocks of plastic are simply a byproduct that can be sold.

Historically - oil was produced for fuel. But in the refining and distillation of oil, you end up with a lot of organic “junk” that you can either dump or make into something useful.

Back when oil refining really stepped up (~WWII era) chemists started looking for ways to use this organic junk and ended up discovering ways to make useful materials from this “junk”. This junk is the building blocks for plastic.

If hypothetically - the world banned plastic as a material - global oil consumption would barely change. Nations and industry use oil primarily for fuel, not plastic. Plastic is the useful byproduct of oil refining, not the driver. And oil prices would rise, because suddenly all the oil companies would have to pay for finding ways to dispose of all these byproducts safely and legally.

The reason plastics are cheap is that oil production and consumption has risen as at a terrifying rate over the last century. More oil to fuel -> more oil refining -> more byproducts to get rid of. Plastics are cheap because the world is using huge amounts of oil, which means huge amounts of petroleum refining “waste” to get rid of.

There are legit concerns and complaints about plastic (biodegradability, possible hormone reactions (bis-A)) but I believe the classic “petroleum consumption” argument is false.

A properly managed forest using sustainable forestry techniques does not destroy habitats.

how come no one’s mentioning black iron (c- and u-bars)? GI for panels.

I can’t speak for anyone else in this thread, but I haven’t been mentioning it because a) by the time I read this thread, this post from you was already here and b) I have no idea what it is that you’re talking about.

also asbestos boards. safe, as long as you don’t eat them or pulverise them into an inhalable susbtance.

I had a professor who claimed that if oil was ever running out, becoming difficult/expensive to extract and other fuels became cheaper, that oil would still be used for these byproducts, not really the plastic supermarket bag, but other higher end polymers.

Well, everyone stopping using plastics would have some impact on the oil industry, since the fact that they can sell the by-products makes it more profitable, and the loss of that marginal profit would take some wells across the line from profitable to unprofitable.

Well, as I noted, a lot of the plastic building materials are recycled pop bottles. So they’re probably serving a reasonably noble purpose. But the ones I’ve seen have some issues. They aren’t as rigid as wood and are worse at bridging spans. I don’t think they’d be very good for framing purposes or underlayment. Maybe OK for outside sheathing purposes. And I suspect they’d generate some nasty toxic fumes during fires.

They certainly have their place in replacing relatively expensive/rare materials such as redwood and teak for decking, though.

Straw

Eh, we’re kinda mixing materials and applications here.

I work in the “plastics” industry, but to be more specific I work in the “composite plastics” industry.

Composites - fiberglass and carbon fiber - have far stronger specific strength than the traditional building materials (wood, iron, steel, etc.)

As for fire, yeah, we also sell a lot of fire-retardant materials that again are better than traditional materials.

You shouldn’t really talk about “recycled plastics” as bridge-building materials, as what I assume you are talking about is recycled thermoplastics. I know very few manufacturers that use thermoplastics as construction materials, simply because thermoplastics are not suited for construction.

When I talk about recycled PET, I’m talking about thermoplastic PET being digested to get pseudo-terephthalic acid, which then goes into unsat polyesters, which is used (end-use) for composite materials.

Here in Canada, pretty much all commercial buildings use aluminum studs for interior framing rather than wood.

Cast concrete is used in most warehouses.

Cinderblock and brick is used a fair bit.

And I’ll be another person noting that forests naturally burn or whither away due to age, disease or pests. Why not cut it down and utilize it? I think it’s somewhat akin to planting a crop of wheat and then not cutting it down because it’s part of nature.

With the use of particle board, wood pulp, glue-lam beams and burning sawdust to generate power, the forestry industry is making very efficient use of trees it cuts down. In addition, planting practices have evolved (at least in Canada) and habitat is not as disrupted as in the past.

Commercial, non-loading bearing buildings in the USA use metal studs, too. Many residential home improvement to the interior/basements are also done with metal.