I wonder about the sterility part - why is autoclaving glass considered difficult?
I've always had this perception that glass is better than plastic. Many plastic products do not sustain high temperatures, and I'm also worried that the plastic products do leech plastic - like, I think that many of the drinking water bottles that one can buy in the shop (or get for free with sponsor branding) adds plastic taste to the water. Further, when doing the dishwash it often seems to me that the plastic products isn't getting properly clean - the fat often seems to be sticking. A proper glass, when washed properly with soda and lots of hot water, seems to get "absolutely clean".
Of course, I do trust that the plastic products used in lab settings is good enough - and the cleanability-issue is not really relevant when discarding the products after usage.
In general, autoclaving glass is not difficult, and we do it every day with macro-sized lab material (flask with a volume of 100 ml+, large pipettes (10 ml+) etc.)
But given the ongoing miniturization in science, we use plastics for everything that requires volumes in the range of 1 µl - 10 ml. And we use A LOT of that stuff. At that scale, glassware is very hard to get clean and sterile once it is used. And ofc, glass only has an environmental advantage IF it can be reused.
That's what I meant with my sentence, thanks for pointing out the missing explaination.