It's a curious conundrum and one that I'm particularly interested in at the moment because we're doing plastic free July; which has shined a light on exactly how much plastic our family uses in the course of a single month (!).
We've always been very environmentally conscious around the easy things- cloth nappies, byo shopping bags, absolutely packaging free kid's school lunchboxes etc... But I have to say that I've hung my head in shame at the amount that still passes into and out of our house on a daily basis.
The paper that we use is recycled baking paper, a sheet about the size of an A4 page is folded into a nifty origami pouch and holds all the dried veggies for one meal, for example... Another will hold the risotto rice. This bundle of two papers is then popped into a paper lunch bag with the meal's name written on it. Other meals are packaged in the same way, separating the sauce or base (Vegetable tagine sauce leather, for example) from the ingredients separately dried (vegetables and chickpeas), and the carb (cous cous)... So that meal would have three, A4 sheets of baking paper. Then all the paper bags (four, for a 4 day walk), are put into a single large ziplock plastic bag.
At the moment our longest walks with the kids have been four nights so this has worked well. I guess I'll just use another ziplock bag for subsequent meals on longer walks. But the big ziplock bag keeps everything dry, so no problems there.
Standared ziplock bags and things like gladwrap aren't food safe when they are heated above certain temperatures (like boiling water) so I've never added hot water to these. Parmesan cheese goes in a little reusable plastic container. The whole lot gets taken home in a paper bag used as rubbish and the paper is chucked in the recycling bin (though in theory I could use most of it again). But yes, it would all biodegrade without any problem. I use the large ziplock bag again... Doesn't even need washing because it's never had anything wet in it.
Just for what it's worth, I know there are problems with any type of product or wrapper designed to be disposabable. But from everything that I've read, paper at least has the potential to biodegrade, whereas plastic is around forever.
Also just a quick and friendly note that none of this is intended to be holier than thou or pontificating!! I'm only talking about personal challenges that our family have set for ourselves. I'm a bit sheepish to say that the plastic free July thing has become something of a hobby for me... (It's actually very exciting to see all the creative solutions people have come up with to lessen disposable plastics.) And we hike with our two kids (7 and 10), and there's nothing like having young children to motivate you into changing old habits in any effort- no matter how small- to make a difference for our environment. It's quite probably a good example to set for them, too... (Hoping to compensate for our parenting-by-benign-neglect approach in other areas!
) I think kids are growing up in a culture of consumption and disposability which I really deplore.