I'm unsure what you exactly mean by cultural opinions but I'll take it to mean along the lines of either - popular public opinion or popular opinion as per the media and shadow players with maybe, other agendas.

There are differing ideas how good or bad our activities are, but not everything is black and white as portrayed by whatever media/ PR body or spokesperson championing a cause.

Certainly various lifestyles have differing ecological impacts even though it may not be very obvious and or may be time dependent ie involving long periods.

For the average person I think it's more of question of not how much is spent, but ensuring value for money - not wasting money having to replace items that used to longer life and or service intervals. At some point the powers that be, do have to get involved in regard to any industry that's less concerned with the waste they are contributing to and more with their profit margin.

To give an example, when synthetic tarps first arrived on the scene for public consumption here in Australia around the late 80s, I found they competed above and beyond the older canvas types, not just on price, but not having to worry about keeping the tarp dry for storage, and they were light meaning they were easy to transport and handle, easy to put up and being lightweight achieving a near flat surface was easy, and were excellent for creating a dry work area underneath where even in a long wet season. So it was for who knows how long, local stores stopped selling canvas tarps, the plastic and quality of new tarps began to undermine just how good the original products were ... move forward thirty years, what's available as plastic tarps from local stores is IMO just rubbish, there's slightly better ones for higher (much) cost but they're still generally rubbish since their service lifetime might actually be a couple of years under Australia's harsh sun. From what I've seen, most can't be pulled into a flat out from new due to poor design, more often the sides are too weak where the eyes are attached ... not that that really matters, the big stumbling block is they are not waterproof for very long, waterproof status can be counted in weeks though less well made ones days is more often ... and then typically after a few months in service, the tarp will show signs it's not at all coping with the harsh sun. I found out the hard way, I'd had a couple of the older tarps from about 1990, they lasted about 12 years, and so then bought a number of large tarps expecting the same. From the first day the clues were there, stretching meant the stitched sides became shorter than the tarps actual width and in 6 months I had half a ton of rubbish not fit for service (as in any pieces that were still in one section were not fit to even keep the weather off) and sat around in a large car sized pile of mess for a number of years while I wondered how if any of it might be one day useful or repurposed ... eventually at some point the only simple option was landfill.

Move to other plastic products present day - yes despite the rinse and repeat here in Australia, there are still store bought gazebos, marquees and various sun shades for cars etc sold to the public here with (often white) not really all that uv resistant plastic sheeting that barely last 6 weeks in the sun - it should be outlawed pure and simple, but it's hard because more often products marketed are hit and run, new brand will say uv resistant but the rubbish dies the same. Things are changing, in stores I'm starting to see a few of these types of shade products making a point they use fabric ...