paper, plastic, or cloth?

When this topic was assigned, the first thing that came to mind was the Club Fair. Drawn by the colors/designs displayed on the table, I walked over and read the little poster displayed on one of the ends of the table. I forget the exact phrasing but it mentioned that plastic bottles never decompose. "Never?" "No, it just keeps breaking down." When I heard this I started thinking about how many plastic items are manufactured per year. Statistics say that 4 to 5 trillion plastic bags are produced, 100 billion are thrown away by Americans alone (per year), and out of that, 1% is recycled. Ok so I guess we can cross out plastic bags from the list, right?

http://environmental-activism.suite101.com/article.cfm/say_no_to_plastic_bags

My first impression of paper bags was that it would be the ideal way to go because paper is recyclable; however, some statistics suggest otherwise: Paper bags take away 13 to 17 billion trees away, and just to get rid of the them would usually require burning, which causes  much pollution. Also, paper bags take 84% more energy to recycle compared to plastic bags. 

http://www.natural-environment.com/blog/2008/01/12/paper-bags-vs-plastic-bags/ 

To me it sounds like the biggest problem here is mass production. Everyone's ultimate concern seems to be how much goes to waste. To be honest, there will always be a mass production of plastic or paper, whether it be for bags, packaging, products, or anything; however, I think that if we want to make drastic changes in terms of bags, I think everyone should go with cloth tote bags. One way to get people to start doing this is to limit the number of plastic bags available to each customer. This way, hopefully, people will get into the habit of bringing their own bags. Recycling doesn't seem to be having a great effect, not as great as many people would like for it to be. Cloth ultimately decomposes and it is reusable It doesn't even have to be heavy duty or anything special. To take it a step further, recycled cloth?