I also suspect they are way more efficient. Whenever I make these comparisons about how I would have made things a few years ago (during my EE bachelors years and brief high tech insanity phase) I realize how I save time for the things I really enjoy: sit under a tree, watch my live stream and the duckies floating on it, listen to the wind in the leaves. But I also save money, energy and materials. For at least some measurable difference: I think I managed to not visit the shops for over two weeks - because for every problem I encounter I try to find a way to solve it with what I have around here. I don't spend the fuel and I don't buy all the stuff I used to. At the moment I mostly use trash and leftover materials from around the farm. I rebuild, recover, reuse what I can.

Here's some random thoughts about building materials and building, since I have been hopping around other people's building sites and my own quite a bit throughout my life:

I look into how to use the naturally available stuff - stones, sticks, clay, plants .... even nicer to work with than trash, but a bit of a learning curve for the average urban-grown person. So I have to compromise of course. I did buy wire mesh for the chicken house, for example, because I don't trust my ability to combine the natural materials so that weasel and mongoose stay out. I am learning to build stone walls by simply playing around with the damaged walls next to my place. It's a useful skill in a place full of stones. What is a useful skill to learn depends on where you live.

When I first started building I used bricks, cement, concrete, metal. These are not people-friendly materials, they are materials of the empire. A lot of energy goes into their production and usually they arrive from far. When you use them your skin hurts, your back hurts, your lungs hurt ... Most modern building sites are sick - building in the wrong places without respect for the place and its former inhabitants, using harmful materials and creating a harmful work environment. And a bit of a feminist view? Did you know there are so many man-sized tools, bags, devices, ladders, helmets on a mainstream building site? Men come home from these places broken, needing repair from 'their' women. We should rethink this way of nest-building and make it a little softer.

To find people-friendly ways of building you have to rethink smaller. Or think modular - a good house is one that can grow with its community. Studying traditional ways of building in different regions can help determine what makes ecological sense where.