I remember there be some tangentially related post about plastics and materials used in food packaging. My feeling was that I would opt for non-plastics everytime. Plastics were still not popularized when I was growing up. There was an argument that lighter and cheaper design were better to carry. Well, IMO, this is how we got here. Sloppy thinking and greed.

An advanced civilizations would discern the benefits of producing different things for the reason that they are cheaper to produce, portibility and disposibility and the dangers of engineering products that cause harm to organic organisms (but not attempt to fix the problem by printing money to research the problem.) If there's cumulative evidence that we've done something harmful to ourselves which can't be attributed to other factors (unlike climate propaganda) you would not fund mitigating the problem by treating the ailment.

If cancer (mutation of cells) is happening and attributed to a number of less-well understood reasons, throwing bad money after good on researching it's treatment is not money well spent. You might want to look at the money incentives more closely and try to stem the root causes.