Paper bags are incredibly inefficient, and requires large swaths of forest.
Plastic bags are incredibly resource efficient, but you must keep it from ever getting into nature.
Plastic bags are incredibly resource efficient, but you must keep it from ever getting into nature.
Also, efficiency isn't everything. If you make something more efficient, then often the saving is passed on to the customer. The customer then spends the money they saved on something else that will have some environmental impact. Or worse, the classic example is plane flight. The industry got a lot more efficient. As a result people can afford to fly a lot more. The environmental impact went up hugely. (Thinking about this now, the efficiency of plastic bags is what made people use so many of them).
I actually had one of these single use bags long enough in a closet for it to degrade to the point where it was basically dried paper mulch.