Animals getting hurt, air getting polluted, and health risks are increasing. We’ve all seen this through social media and the Internet. This all sounds frightening that single-use plastics are making this mess, and it is common sense to ban the usage of single-use plastics. However single use plastics is an ineffective way to save the environment, for it reduces employment, the economy will get hurt, and it will not benefit the environment.

Firstly, banning single use plastics will reduce employment for businesses. A survey recorded employment in a Los Angeles plastic bag ban and shockingly found out that stores inside of the ban reduce 10% of employment, however 2.4% of employment had risen outside of the ban. This proves that many businesses depend on single use plastics to get workers. Even if there will be a single-use plastic ban, more than 30,000 jobs that require single-use production would be at stake, so will the employees that depend on this job to make a living.

Secondly, if we ban single-use plastics we will hurt the simple and affordable economy we have. On Seattle’s ban on plastic bags, almost 40% of surveyed store owners described seeing their costs for carryout bags increase between 40% to 200%. Business sales will be negatively affected due to these prices increasing for consumers, the profit decreasing for the producers, and economic activities decreasing as well. If we were to substitute single-use plastics, prices will be higher. According to a poll 83% of people will not be willing to pay that higher price, and people will start crossing to the other side of the country just like the Connecticut’s 2019 plastic bag tax.

Many people and researchers believe that if we ban single-use plastics, we will start to use substitutes so the air will improve, and food will be less contaminated. However, in the paper from the State Chamber of Oklahoma on how banning single-use plastics affect the economy and environment, it argues that if we use substitutes, like cloth, we will also have a risk of cross-contamination and disease to the food we buy. This is mainly because, cloth items need be used 104 times before it is more effective like single-use plastics and for paper, 43 times until it is safer. Plus, if we are getting rid of this simple convenience, we have to find the out-of-the-box idea to substitute without harming the environment. The closest ideas we have to substitute single-use plastics is still far from the perfection of single-use plastics

On the outside, banning single-use plastics sounds like a great idea to stop pollution. However, on the inside, it provokes great harm. Due to the reduction of employment, the damage of the economy, and the ineffectiveness on the environment itself, banning single use plastics is an ineffective way to save the environment. After all it is not a question of single-use plastics harming our world, or our world harming single-use plastics.