An open letter to the next Premier of Ontario
To whom it may concern,
I know you must be busy, but after you read this you'll at once agree that I couldn't in good conscience keep this idea to myself.
The other day I bought a TV and was surprised to see on the bill a $25 eco charge. Fantastic! It's a small price to pay for the safe disposal of all the hazardous material found in television sets. Your forward-thinking predecessor understood that if we're not careful with the garbage inside our televisions, they'll transform our society into a vast wasteland.
But here's the thing. You have my $25 now and I don't plan to dispose of my TV for many years. What is this money doing in the mean time? Would a bank simply sit on it? Rather than leave the money wasting away just sitting there to nobody's benefit (I'm sure), I'd like to evoke the enlightened spirit of the eco charge and propose that the money is immediately used for a deserving environmental cause.
I'd like to bring your attention to the sad plight of New Zealand's little spotted kiwi. A raptite belonging to the Apterygidae family, they are at high risk of becoming endangered because their diminutive stature (they weigh only two pounds, but can be as heavy as four) combined with the fact that they are a flightless bird renders them utterly helpless against predators like cats, dogs and stoats.
Imagine a bird with no wings, the poor things, how taunting the sky is when they can't fly in it! And meanwhile they're stuck on land, exposed to the wrath of the deadly stoat. But we can help them. Doing the right thing takes great vision and determination, but if we act now and streamline the eco fees to where our beloved ecosystem needs them most I propose we can build the little spotted kiwis some type of protective fence.
Put in these terms, I'm sure the voters will be ecstatic. When the wisdom of this eco-nomic policy has fully sunk in, I anticipate they will urge for the eco fee to increase and be added to other products. I understand recycling cream cheese containers involves the nuisance of scraping the substance off the container's side before the process can begin. For this trouble, perhaps a modest levy can go towards replanting a woody homeland for Brazil's bald parrot. As leader of the party who invented the eco fee, I'm sure that, whoever you are, you are as passionate about this subject as I am.
I look forward to hearing back from you because I know you'll do the right thing.