I can carry one of those in each arm or maybe three total bags, if I balance it right. With the plastic ones I can get just about the whole trunk-load wrapped around my wrists and up the stairs in one go.

They take much more energy/water/land to make, making them much more expensive. Traditionally they didn't have handles and weren't as strong as plastic either. Plastic bags are much better for the store and consumer, ignoring any externalities.

Here in Maryland they have returned. We got rid of the plastic bags and they brought in paper. I think grocery stores are required to charge ten cents.

(Not fast food restaurants, though some entrepreneurial or confused franchise managers did try for a while.)

I worked for a supermarket in the late 1980s and we were always trying to give people as few bags as possible because... the bags cost money and come out of our profits.

We used to get a lot of requests for what we called a "Boston Bag" (this was New Hampshire) which was a large paper bag inside two plastic bags. The claim was that people who had to go up the stairs in apartments in Boston demanded this sort of bag.

We replaced them with plastic to be more environmentally friendly, as making paper requires a lot of resources/water not to mention cutting down trees.

Yes, we just keep repeating history.