>>>Never use plastic when you can use wood. >>> >>> >>Mileage varies. I'm building a deck to replace a rotten porch on my house. >>Rather than using regular wood decking, I'm using a composite material >>made >>from roughly equal parts recycled plastic bags and saw dust. >> >> >I have to question whether it's better to encourage the lumber industry in >cutting down all our forests, or to assist the plastics industry in >expanding our landfills. > > > You know those containers outside of grocery stores that you stuff full of your old plastic grocery sacks (if you do such things)? That's where the wood/plastic composite people get their plastic. Your bags aren't getting used to make new bags, they're getting sold to companies like Trex for chopping up and melting down. Trex is keeping your polyethylene _out_ of the landfills. >While lumber is a theoretically renewing resource, I'm not sure it can keep >pace with demand. > > > Once again, what would otherwise be a waste product is being put to good use. Some lumber mills burn their sawdust as an energy source, but during certain times of the year they produce more sawdust than they can burn and some places actually pay companies to come and take it away for them. No new trees are being cut down for the express purpose of being turned into wood composite. It's really a cool product. Basically they are taking trash, combining the two components (it's a little more complicated than that, but not much), and then selling the product to you for a good deal more than you would pay for lumber. From what I can tell of the finished product, it's well worth it. Simbelmyne Recovering Wood Science graduate, soon to be Registered Medical Technologist