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This is a non-trivial problem. The best thing for the environment is for all of us to stop buying so much shit we don't need, but that would require a dramatic shift in how society works and the cultural values of pretty much everyone. Cookies coming in metal tins again would be way worse for the environment than plastic, but you also have to remember that when cookies came in metal tins, they were luxury items people would buy for holidays and special occasions. The only way to meaningfully improve things for the environment in terms of packaging is for all of us to buy less pre-packaged food in general.
Expanding access to goods is both good and bad, and plastic containers are a big part of that process. I think it's completely unrealistic to replace all single-use plastics with non-plastic alternatives, and I think that efforts to do so have largely backfired in unexpected ways. This problem is best solved by reducing the amount of useless shit we buy but in the meantime I think biodegradable polymers are a good bridge technology. We actually already know about a lot of biodegradable polymers because the earliest polymers were based on biopolymers such as cellulose, resin, and rubber, and these have remained commercially important enough to maintain a high degree of knowledge of their chemistries.
Another problem, of course, is that most people don't actually want truly biodegradable polymers. You don't want a ketchup bottle that starts breaking down while you're still using it or impacts the taste of the ketchup, but you also don't want to buy it in a thick, non-squeezable glass bottle. So from an engineering perspective we have to devise plastics that are biodegradable, but only when we want them to be. There are a lot of advancements in this field, but it's still not enough on its own to fix things. This issue also applies to paper, since almost all "paper" packaging products also include polymers as sealants to improve performance precisely because paper has all the same issues without it.
I get your point, but I gotta say: I do want to buy my ketchup in a glass bottle. And I do, mostly because the ketchup is 10 times better than then generic crap that is Heinz or whatever major name.
But I don't mind shaking the bottle, it's not hard.
Most things I don't want plastics for, and in the case of viscous fluids, why not jars?
It would be nice to drop off the jar with the local mustard maker and get a fresh one. Standardizing on glass sizes would help a lot, but then of course we gave water issues for cleaning all of them.