The drive to ban plastic bags and Styrofoam cups from Fremont supermarkets and restaurants appears dead. The City Council received a report Tuesday, which found that alternatives to those non-biodegradable bad guys aren’t so good themselves.

Paper bags, for instance, consume about seven times more materials than plastic bags and account for nearly double the CO2 emissions , the city report found. Of course, paper bags are far more frequently recycled, don’t require oil to produce and take less than 1,000 years to biodegrade.

Everyone agreed that tote bags are the best option, but apparently most middle-aged men are incapable of remembering to bring them to the store.

The council didn’t get much of a chance to say what they thought about all this during the meeting — they’ll do that in a week or two — but afterwards even environmental stalwart Bob Wieckowski said he wouldn’t push for the plastic bag ban, which San Francisco and Oakland have passed.

He did say he still favored a Styrofoam packaging ban of some sort, but three other council members told me they are opposed to any ban in the immediate future.