Well present times, finding good or value, a lot of products and services are pot luck since many companies are walking away from standing behind their brand - even concepts like oh that product was the grey version / market ...

Plastic tarps over my way, most are cheap even if a large amount of money is shelled out. I doubt anyone in the northern parts of Australia can say they're still got a store purchased one that's still fit for purpose and been in use for 2 years out in the weather. There's of course better tarps are about, more often custom made from tough vinyl and similar and not something one would find in regular hardware stores here for bulk purchase.

Getting back to your original questions, I guess you mean along the lines if one pays more money for nearly identical products or services, the more expensive version has some (supposed or imagined) overall benefit - eg free range eggs at supermarkets will be more expensive than caged eggs. That's not by accident, marketers know or look for real or imagined value that may help move more of the product at an increased asking price.

From the ecological impact we as people might impart while we live, it's less about money, more about what we do with things we've bought and how we dispose of them, and if considering the atmosphere and oceans remain close to their current state, include (as a cost of sorts to the environment) the amount of extra net carbon (fossil carbon minus recycled carbon) they've directly consumed and contributed to.

I would also add, don't get too caught up in purposely spending money on ecological projects that are not guaranteed long term prospects, like more than 50 years if not forever - I've seen too many good intentions that people have spent years, decades, greening up and helping capture carbon by planting trees, more often as a by product for visual improvement purposes around cities and suburbia as well as providing cool areas and shade reducing heat and thus cooling measures like air conditioning units, undone very quickly by a few clowns in local authorities who knee jerk in response of legal suits or appeasing the it's not native crowd. There's also been those who've invested in shared tree plantations whether timber or other end products, only for the project to struggle (not return great profits) to be sold on - more often into the hands of developers who raze the entire effort, 20 .. 30 years more or less down the drain.

Most of us are on a path set by manufacturers and their marketing and the rule makers, sometimes it makes sense there was better, sometimes it's just bonkers.

I can describe a case of bonkers from first hand - I have spent most of my life in or around rural farming areas and the first instance of a widespread recycling program, apart from glass bottles used for milk and softdrink, was for plastic 50 kg / 100 pound fertiliser bags. Farmers often used a few ton of fertiliser a year to supplement nitrogen needs for their crop, so would have emptied a great quantity of bags. They were opened with care as an agent of the fertiliser company would come around to collect them if they had a great amount of these bags - they were refilled and re used until they wore out, often though damage. Then during the 90s it was more typical farmers used 1 ton bags of fertiliser and once more these were wanted by the fertiliser company so they could refill and reuse them. As some point in the last 20 years, that practice was banned - these bags are now single use though the plastic material seems undamaged by removing the contents. The bags now do have big warning labels attached to them not to be refilled (I guess for some other purpose, with something else that's dense like soil or sand) Since the bags are single use, and no recycling program exists, many just get burned since the landfill fee is too high for near broke farmers.