No Paper: Good or Bad?

On Tuesday, our school banned all printing. Of course, banning printing for a day is a good idea. The whole school can save a lot of paper and contribute less harm to the earth. However, there are some downsides. Although no one printed for a whole day, that would just push back what was going to happen. The next day, everything would go back to normal and people would be printing just as much as the y were printing before.

In the graph above, I show the demand and supply of paper and printing on the day it was banned. On that day, the demand went down, because we weren’t allowed to print at all. Along with the decreased demand was the decreased quantity and price. Less money was used by the school to pay for the paper. The supply didn’t change because no paper was used.


2 Responses to “No Paper: Good or Bad?”

  1. I agree with your post. A ban is definitely a good idea to reduce the consumption of paper. With the shift in demand graph, there is also a negative externality of consumption. Because there was there was a lower demand for paper due to the ban, the private benefit is moving towards the social benefit.

  2. Although the banning of printing any papers does catch our attention to the impact we are making on the environment, I agree with you, the school should think of a better way to solve the problem. Banning will only impede the process for a period of time, but it will increase once the ban is lifted.

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