The trouble with paper bags is that they don't biodegrade without oxygen, which is what happens when you bury paper under tons of other material in a land fill.

The trouble with paper bags is that they don't biodegrade without oxygen, which is what happens when you bury paper under tons of other material in a land fill. So the paper and the plastic are both there 100 years later, but the paper takes up more space in the long run because it doesn't compress as small. Unfortunately there's no good answer here yet that I've seen.