there were, are and will be alternatives. we won't go back but we evolve. plastics ruin taste and they feel bad. people's senses are just a "bit fucked up" due to the many "other" things in water, air, soil, drinks and food.
Glass bottles used to be much more common but they're more expensive, very easy to break, and heavier, which also increases cost of transportation. Paper containers for things can't be allowed to get wet which often makes them impractical. Metals are expensive, potentially reactive, heavy, and inflexible.
Yes plastics are very environmentally problematic, but they do solve a lot of problems that aren't really solved by any other kind of material.
The choice was a purely pseudo-economic one.
a) Alternatives needed less than 12 months longer R&D.
b) Alternatives were less than 5% more expensive.
c) Alternatives were reusable/repairable and would not have been single-use, which would have reduced production mid- and long-term.
d) Alternatives would have sparked more industries and would have created more jobs, more captains and more (metaphorical) ships, especially in engineering and crafts.
e) Alternatives would have meant better production methods and waste that would be easier and more constructive to handle, which would have meant better health and a more thriving environment and natural produce, which would have meant less opportunity to study negative impacts on humans as well as flora and fauna and less opportunity to make all kinds of swarms dependent on corporate "solutions".
Again, alternatives would have sparked more industries and would have boosted our civilization's/colony's R&D by 50 or more years. And the resulting cumulative competition would have boosted R&D even further. More money overall, less of gap between the wealthiest and the rest.
Pretending that the growing populations required unhealthy factory jobs is thus irrational. People were keen to learn and work and thrive and even dimwits like me had enough brains to catch up within a few months or years.
The conventional argument "do we create jobs now or later" is nonsense, as more emerging industries would have meant at least just as many jobs.
I could probably use an LLM and some books to craft a much better and technical answer but I probably won't use any for at least some longer while.