This fell off my car, can I just rip it off and not care?

A while back, I went to one of those corporate places for an oil change. They fucked up putting the metal thing back on the undercarriage, but a family member told me it would be okay without that. So I’ve been driving without the metal protective layer thing.

This fell off sometime on my drive home from work. We are currently experiencing tornadoes, so I can’t examine it too closely at the moment. It appears that it was just zip tied back on…

I am dead broke - my money this month has to go to car insurance, I can’t even afford registration at this point.

Can I just rip it off? I need an oil change soon, but I’m going to try to stretch it out a month or so.