A Letter to the Prime Minister

We have evolved as a human race. We were once cavemen and women, we once hunted for food. We have evolved, which leads to an unfortunate circumstance to our planet. We understand what we are doing to it, we understand that we are slowing killing our planet, yet we continue to do these things that pollute our oceans. Our oceans are dying so, a letter I will write to express the maddening concern for our planet.

Dear Prime Minister,

Our planet is dying, yes I am sure you have heard. Greta Thunberg has expressed this many times. I do not want to yell at the top of my lungs, I do not want to create some speech to make you realize what is happening because you know perfectly well what is happening to our planet. I will however, share the statistics with you. I recently, read a book titled "Earth Then and Now" it is exactly like it sounds like. The book shows pictures of what certain world wonders used to look like and what they look like now and it is scary to see how much change can occur. Most of these photographs that were taken from nature are ice covered places like Antarctica there used to be so much ice and most of it has melted. The coldest place on earth is melting, how is that okay? and this year the penguins at the Calgary zoo were too cold outside. It was too cold for the arctic penguins to be outside in Calgary, that does not sound normal to you. The world is changing and the people are getting more concerned about the environment everyday. "Every year, Canadians throw away over 3 million tonnes of plastic waste. This represents up to $8 billion per year in lost value and wastes valuable resources and energy. About one-third of the plastics used in Canada are for single-use or short-lived products and packaging." (https://pm.gc.ca/en/news/news-releases/2019/06/10/canada-ban-harmful-single-use-plastics-and-hold-companies-responsible Jun 10, 2019) This was taken directly from the website of Justin Trudeau. Why do we keep throwing so much away? is there some other way to make sure that we are not wasting billions of dollars? not only money, but 3 million tons of plastic every year? that's disgusting. The plan is to ban single-plastic use so that would be straws, stir sticks, cups and utensils, yet at fast-food restaurants I am still being given plastic. Everything is still plastic and the plan is to cut it all out by 2021. I do not see it happening. Plastic is what is killing our oceans. All sorts of endanger sea creatures are eating garbage and plastic, then they wind up dead on the shores and if you cut open the belly of a whale more than 95% of waste is all plastic and waste. I found this website called Plastic Oceans Canada, where their goal is to decrease plastic and litter in oceans by 75%, that is a more realistic goal. According to their website by 2050 seafood will not longer be accessible, which is completely realistic. So, dear Prime Minister is there anything else we can do other than create different bins for recycling, garbage and compost? should we have a reuse bin? where we can put all of our plastics into a container transform them into toys for under privileged children? or maybe something else that is useful? I have recently started volunteering at the hospital and straws are still plastic, cups are still plastic and we know how many patients are going through the hospital, there are no separate containers for just recycling there is only one bin in each unit. That needs to change and change fast. Sure outside the unit doors there are containers for juice boxes, paper and plastic and clean plastic, but no one will walk an extra twenty five feet just to reach that bin. Those should be accessible in the unit. I ask you make a change.

Thank you,

Yours truly,

A concerned Canadian.