Danger to Marine life:
Of all the balloons released into the air intentionally or by accident 90-95% rise and burst, but this means that a crucial 5-10% do not. Typically drifting at lower altitudes, before settling on the land or sea semi-inflated. It is these balloons which pose the worst hazard to marine life. Whales, turtles, dolphins, sea birds and even fish will confuse them with jelly fish, squid, or other natural prey and swallow them. The balloon then lodges in the animals gut, causing a slow and painful death by starvation, or strands of latex, or the string/ribbon is ingested and tangles inside them again resulting in a slow painful death.
Biodegradable?
A lot of people fall into the trap that Biodegradable means, environmentally safe. It does not, if not ingested by wildlife a latex balloon will degrade and break up into smaller and smaller pieces, but will still be present within the water column or local environment. If it has not been incinerated every bit of plastic ever made in the world still exists somewhere. There is a lot of concern about the amount of large visible plastic floating around our oceans, such as the Pacific gyre garbage patch, but there are now places within our oceans where the amount of plastic outweighs the quantity of plankton present. Our oceans are slowly turning into a plastic soup. Don’t let your celebration be the cause of death to wildlife. Marine animals such as turtles, dolphins, whales and seabirds are known to have swallowed balloon pieces - on land, grazing cattle and wildlife can also be harmed.
I have been in contact with any company we have been able to identify from balloon remains found on any beach. These have included:
MacDonald's (CEO) |
No reply |
KFC |
No reply |
Harvester Restaurants |
No reply |
Frankie & Benny's (the restaurant group) (CEO) |
said that they would improve staff trainning |
I have also been in contact with Clinton cards to try and get them to include a warning on their Helium balloon party packs, to try and get people to dispose of the balloons correctly once they have finished with them. It is the information (click here to read) they sent back about their latex balloons being biodegradable which prompted the balloon experiment at the top of the page.
Here is part of the e-mail from Clinton cards
"We are looking into adding a warning label onto our products to advise customers of the correct ways to dispose of latex and foil balloons and that mass balloon releases should be avoided at all costs. In the meantime and as we work with our suppliers we will be looking into some signage on or around our till points to re-enforce this.
Again, please rest assured that Clinton Cards is extremely environmentally aware and that we take these matters seriously. We would not want any of the products we sell to damage the environment or injury wildlife in anyway."
Could this be a minor success? Lets hope so and that it is not just idle talk, but a concerted effort to address this unfortunate situation.
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It sounds dramatic, but lost balloons can have a devastating impact on the environment and our marine life in particular. It’s an old adage – what goes up must come down, but that doesn't’t make it any less true. For every lost balloon – whether by accident or not, latex litter is the result.