Would Banning Plastic Bottles Help or Hurt the Planet?

by Owen

Would banning plastic bottles help or hurt the planet? This debate has been a huge argument between world leaders. Would banning plastic bottles help the planet? Or hurt it? Many people have different opinions but I’m here to break it down and share my own opinion.

Let’s start with the pros. First of all, three percent of the world’s pollution is made up of plastic and plastic bottles. Banning them would reduce not just land pollution, but bring the animal population back up. Plastic bottles have been polluting the Earth’s ocean for years, and it doesn’t look like it is going to stop anytime soon.

Getting rid of plastic bottles would hopefully speed up the development of full recyclable bottles. If plastic bottles were banned, the fish and animal population would slowly increase because the pollution from the plastic would not be as much of a problem. Plastic bottles also pollute not just the ocean, but other bodies of water, like lakes and rivers. A lot of cities and water treatment facilities harvest water from those bodies of water, so if the plastic bottles were banned, the water would be less contaminated and more drinkable.

Those are some of the pros I came up with, but this article needs an argument. Let’s talk about the cons.

Okay, this might seem silly because some of you are probably thinking, “There aren’t any cons! Only pros!” Well, that’s not true. There are cons, and they actually make a good argument.

One con is, some people can’t get easy access to clean water, and bottled water is clean, cheap, and easy to get. You can get a pack of fifty bottles of water and it will cost you twenty cents a bottle. They are less expensive, which is one reason why they are so popular and have staged a huge part of pollution. If plastic bottles were banned, some people would not have access to clean water, which would throw the world into an epidemic of disease. Plastic bottles are easy to get and you can find them almost anywhere.

I acknowledge these reasons, but I think the world will be a better place without plastic bottles. If they are, I think we should start giving out water bottles for free and making sure that people have access to clean tap water.

I hope that scientists and engineers find out how to make a biodegradable bottle, even if it is made out of plastic. Anyway, that’s it for now, and I hope people see this and agree with me. If not, that’s okay, but I would think about it a little more, and delve deeper into this big question.

I think it would be better for the Earth to ban plastic bottles, and that is just my opinion.