[kbenson]

I'd say education and culture might be right on the money. I'm not sure it's occurred to me to take a small block of some type of plastic and cut it to shape using knives, planes, chisels and files like someone could with wood, but now that I'm thinking about it, it seems like it might be considerable easier to work with than wood in some cases, especially with how easy it is to join two parts afterwards with some epoxy or maybe even through heat.

Additionally, it looks like you can possibly re-melt the shavings into another block (I'm not sure if specific plastic types are required).[1] That's like woodworking but being able to easily gather and compress your bits and ends and sawdust into more wood.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34wPmcgDRmg