[AdamN]

Petroleum is definitely more environmentally friendly than the timber industry. You probably haven't driven around tree farms - monoculture that destroys the environment for hundreds of square miles. Even worse is when they pulp existing forest for things like toilet paper:

https://www.rcinet.ca/en/2019/02/26/u-s-use-of-toilet-paper-...

[KennyBlanken]

That's an article about toilet paper usage, not building material. There's no petroleum toilet paper, by the way.

Wood is biodegradable, renewable, and recyclable. It can be grown and harvested sustainably; I know because I used to work with a guy who made a living off surveying forestry for sustainable timber harvesting.

It causes no environmental issues if left to rot, doesn't have to be disposed of in a particular way.

The vast majority (well over 90%) of plastic is not recycled.

Plastic never goes away. Plastic just breaks down into microparticles that are now so pervasive there's basically no part of the planet that doesn't have microplastics, no animal that doesn't have them in its digestive system. And all the while, it's leeching out toxic chemicals.

[megameter]

Wood itself is sustainable, but in making a choice of building materials, we're also looking for total embedded energy cost and impact of the final product. Traditional buildings from a century ago relied on the harvest of old-growth wood with denser rings than the new sustainable forestry, and they were built with fewer features - when built well they didn't fail, but they weren't targeting high energy performance, climate control, dust and mold resistance, etc. We can't go back - we could lower our standards but the stock of old-growth remains depleted. New wood constructions often use processed and glued timbers because the processed timbers can be lighter(good glue is really strong) and they don't experience nearly as many quality control issues(solid wood tends to warp).

The thing is, once we start looking at wood in detail, it's never just wood. It's wood, plus adhesives, paints, and finish. You can't use just wood because it rots - you at least need to add some pigment to block UV rays and drainage to limit water pooling. Each of those additives are a potential source of VOCs(volatile organic compounds, the term that more accurately describes "chemicals"). And each step taken during processing adds energy cost. Paper and corrugated cardboard are not innocuous - they use one of the higher-energy processes relative to the amount of input material.

When you look at what you can do besides wood, you get similar tradeoffs. Stone is great, but it's still hard to work with directly, hard enough to not scale to our industrial population - as it stands, you need an artisianal economy of stonemasons to make those huge ancient constructions. Concrete has a huge climate footprint and the dust is a major VOC source. Steel is high-energy and not abundant enough to be used everywhere.

Thus, plastics enter as a way of getting some of the qualities we want. Plastics are not all one of a kind and have varying VOC content. We can't afford not to use them to have this population and quality of life, which means we have to study how to use them safely. The microplastic issue is a part of that, but it's oversold as "plastic is scary". Wood smoke is also scary, as anyone who has been around a wildfire will attest.

[reissbaker]

Curious to see some data on these claims. Yes, glue is often made out of "chemicals" — but plastic also is. Is the total environmental cost of plastic lower than wood? Besides, you're not going to frame a house with plastic: it's steel and concrete, vs wood. AFAIK plastic doesn't enter the equation here.

[short12]

We ready use plastic in decks. I bet it can be further scaled up. At what cost I have no idea though. But I wouldn't count it out as a primary building material

[quixoticelixer-]

Old growth wood is not inherintly stronger than plantation timber

[agumonkey]

Few things, maybe the way to farm trees is naive and can be done in better ways. Just entice companies to have different ways of working (even if they raise the price a little afterwards)

Also petroleum being a big factor in CO2 levels it's hard to not put it first isn't it ?

[whiddershins]

A side benefit of burning the petroleum is trees do grow much faster and bigger.

Somehow there is a synergy here we haven’t quite accessed.

Burn petroleum => release CO2 => tree grows, sequesters CO2 => use tree for something that doesn’t burn it or compost it …

I feel like we are on the edge of figuring this out.

[quixoticelixer-]

lmao