Pine bedding as cat litter?

With my ever growing furbaby family, I've been searching for a natural eco-friendly cat litter. I made the rounds of feline pine, swheat scoop, litters made of corn cob and recycled newspaper, etc. w/o being impressed. If the product being tested clumped then Jordan's "digging to china" approach to the litterbox meant that the clumps were cemented to the bottom so bad that I actually bent a metal scoop. If the granules were too big then Regina refused to use it. When using clay scoopable style litter I'd clean the litterbox daily. So now I pose my questions...Does anyone know the pro's and con's of using plain old small animal pine bedding as cat litter? I know that clay litters never breakdown but does this bedding cause an equally bad impact on the planet? And what adverse health effects could this cause? Obviously pine bedding isn't scoopable, so how frequently would it need to be dumped to prevent risk of infection to my brat babies? Price wise pine bedding is more economical than anything else even if I do have to dump it out ever other day. Thanks for any input and try to enjoy today despite the weather :)