Often plastic really is the optimum material for an application. There's plenty of plastic on the ISS, where money is no object. If you buy something manufactu

Often plastic really is the optimum material for an application. There's plenty of plastic on the ISS, where money is no object. If you buy something manufactured with Kevlar or Teflon or Gore-Tex, that will be prominent in the marketing, and it really is better than steel for ballistic protection or oilskins for keeping you dry. If you buy plumbing supplies, the vendor will advertise whether they are plastic, and if so, whether they are PVC or LDPE - neither better nor worse than copper pipes, but with different performance characteristics. For clothing, polyester is a less premium material than wool - largely because it's cheaper; if wool was free we'd still make plastic clothes - so the seller advertises the wool component.