Still failing Chesterton's Fence over plastics

Varied of the environmentalists are still not grasping the basics of matters. Here it's Lucy Siegle talking of plastics:

The injustice is not only to the planet. Ninety per cent of the cost of disposal of plastic is borne by consumers and just 10% by the manufacturers and retailers that impose it on us in the first place.

There's no one here but us humans to be carrying the costs of anything at all. If we mandate, as an example, a tax upon the production of plastics then that is in the first instance paid by those manufacturers. But of course that all then becomes incident upon consumers as prices rise. No, not because manufacturers raise prices to pass on that cost, but because those that don't go bust.

But this is the real error:

It’s pretty clear to everybody that plastic is a dumb material to pick for everyday use.

So why are we so using it then? Why is it that since their inventions plastics have been used to do near everything? To replace paper, cardboard, wood, metals as the material of choice? 

Chesterton's Fence is to insist that unless you know why something was done you cannot know whether it should still be done. Without asking why we all use plastics, why we started to, we cannot answer the question of whether we should still be using them.

Sure, plastics have costs but then so does getting up in the morning. What we need to know is what are the benefits? Further, do they outweigh the costs? Until we know that last we've no idea at all whether the crusade against them is worthwhile or even useful or not.