Releasing these balloons is littering. It's exactly the same as throwing the empty balloon into someones garden or into a river. Get people to perceive it as littering and most will stop releasing balloons, or will no longer perceive it as cool or pretty. Make it seem gross. Shame any events that do this on instagram - that's probably a good start.

Then maybe we can get started on cigarette butts, the one thing that is bizarrely socially acceptable to litter anywhere - even in places with a strong social stigma for other littering.

Where are you that cigarette butt litter is acceptable?

Here in Melbourne it was common ~10 years ago, but you barely see it now.... probably related to the >$600 on the spot fine if someone sees you do it.

I am surprised how incredibly lazy some people are. I have been standing at train stations waiting for the train to arrive and there is a trash can ten feet away and the smoker will just drop the cigarette right where they are standing.

I thought it was obvious to everyone that this is littering, but I forgot how stupid people are.

There's a very big difference between ignorance and stupidity

That's pretty harsh and really incorrect. Some people didn't have great role models growing up to teach them these things and have to learn them themselves later on.

The average person is probably less intelligent than the people surrounding you at home and work. Don't underestimate idiocy - though it's probably a combination of both.

Well of course the average person is less intelligent than the rest of us.

After all, 90% of drivers have above average skill!

I was walking out of Costco earlier this week and noticed a gentleman had a pack of 100+ balloons in his cart. These balloons were pre-fitted with plastic straws, for easy balloon blowing, of course. This will all be garbage in a matter of days after a few fleeting seconds of joy. I just about lose my mind when I see 1) such a product exists and 2) someone actually buys such a product. It was probably for a child’s birthday party, but there has to be another way to share cheer.

Edit: spelling.

That kind of balloon wouldn't fly away, it'd just be blown up manually with air instead of helium.

I think these were probably water balloons. The idea is that all of those straws are connected to a single garden hose fill adaptor, so the whole bunch of balloons can be filled at once. (example: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/33011481532.html)

I abhor the single-use plastic, but at the same time water balloons are just fun in the summer. If paintballs can be made biodegradable (they're gelatin), maybe there's hope for water balloons, too.

I'd guess they are water balloons from the description. My wife has purchased those from Costco. They are e easy to fill up all at once. They do make an unholy mess that takes the kids a while to pick up.

Under the sunny conditions that facilitate their use, they bake onto surfaces. It's horrendous when you find a bit that wasn't seen, but just another childhood/childrearing experience.

One doesn't need to be too old to be responsible of his own actions

I'm really hoping for a ban on tables next. https://imgur.com/a/JarB9mN

A ban on throwing tables into a lake or ocean? That's probably be good ... pretty sure that's already banned in a lot of places. Illegal dumping and all.

See also The Balloonfest That Went Horribly Wrong

https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/562556/cleveland-bal...

The video is like it came from some alternate reality https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0CT8zrw6lw

"No one's quite sure where they went but at least they are both longer posing a threat to fish and wildlife."

Goodie, I guess they went outside the environment then. /s

It's like no one of those who collaborated thought of the consequences past the first ten minutes of release and even days later people still fail to see past what's immediately perceptible.

For anyone unfamiliar with the reference, here is Senator Bob Collins of Australia explaining what happens when a tanker ship is towed beyond the environment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM

It seems like you might have eaten the onion, I'm afraid: that's not senator Bob Collins, it's satirist John Clarke.

You mean the same John Clarke whose name is in the URL at the bottom of the video? Who would have guessed!

Let me share a comedy tip with you. This video is funny even if you already know the joke - I crack up every time I see it - but it's even more fun to watch it for the first time not knowing that it is satire.

Don't worry, everyone will figure it out halfway through...

It seems you might not understand context.

it's a comedy skit

Whoa, really?!

See my other reply in this thread... ;-)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20047633

From the video: "Most of the balloons ended up in Canada".

So problem solved then.

"This will show Cleveland is a live and happening place"

"Cleveland will no longer be the butt of jokes"

They were releasing balloons... They weren't even trying to set the bar high and it still blew up in their faces...

“As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.”

I normally see balloons and think of the wasted helium, which is a bit of a nerd response. We in tech worry about the loss of helium on these petty applications but lose this battle.

The damage to wildlife from ingested balloons and how they are more toxic than previously imagined is something I will be astro-turfing from now on. I care about the birds a lot more than the helium.

Are biodegradable alternatives to latex available?

e.g. Could you make balloons out of something like polyvinyl alcohol (think dishwasher pods) so that they dissolve in the rain?

> Are biodegradable alternatives to latex available?

Latex does biodegrade - the article says this.

Not as fast as would be ideal for balloons, and of course the balloons should just not be released. But latex is a natural organic product - it does biodegrade.

Weren't the original balloons animal bladders, which seem gross but certainly biodegradable?

Why is it gross? Sausage skins are still commonly made out of pig guts.

The vegetables you eat are probably covered in insect poo, even more so for the expensive organic stuff.

Those leather shoes on your feet are the skins of dead animals.

Even plastic is made out of dead rotted dinosaur.

> Even plastic is made out of dead rotted dinosaur.

Not true. Oil (from which most plastic is derived) is formed by bacteria [1].

[1] https://www.thoughtco.com/does-oil-come-from-dinosaurs-10920...

Yes. Though think bigger.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/airlines/a16637939/b...

Interesting idea. I would expect such balloons to pop far more readily, especially in a party environment or with human handling. But for an outdoor balloon release it could be just the ticket.

'Biodegradable plastic' is great I'm sure but it promotes bizarre thinking like this. How about we just decide not to have mass-pollution parties for no reason, rather than trying to reduce their impact with expensive new materials?

Because changing human behavior on a large enough scale is often orders more difficult than finding a technological alternative.

Of course in the long run you're right, but where traditions are involved, sometimes it can ease the transition. "No balloons" is a much harder sell than "expensive biodegradable balloons", for someone who feels it's an essential thing. Eventually price pressure will cause the tradition to phase out organically, with people feeling like they have a choice, rather than the resentment caused by "no more balloon release parties, starting next week!"

Is this really that much of a thing? Presumably we're mostly dealing with groups - probably mostly charities. Is it really so hard to create public consciousness that releasing a tonne of baloons into the air for no reason is littering that putting loads of effort into designing and promoting alternatives is worth it?

price pressure like a fine or a hefty surcharge at the point of sale would help too, no?

Like the war on plastic straws, this is such a small part of the problem. Come visit Cambodia or Vietnam and see the coastline. I've driven almost the entire coast of both countries and there isn't a single beach that isn't literally covered in heaps of trash.

Well yeah, each individual type of thing is going to be a small part of the overall problem. But if it's the most effective way to get people to care then I don't have a problem with singling out plastic straws, or balloons or whatever.

Straws are a good one to single out too because a vast number of them come from just a few major fast food chains, so if you get them to care you get rid of them relatively easily.

This strikes me as another form of whataboutism, like "oh you're only dealing with such a small part of the problem, what about all this other stuff you're not doing, obviously you you shouldn't even bother". If noone ever bothers with the individual parts then the whole problem is never going to stop.

Except straws make up less than a percent of ocean plastic, while almost half is fishing gear. Fishing is destroying the ocean for that and several other reasons. Even if we're wildly successful and completely outlaw straws and a dozen other things, the impact of the real problems is going to outweigh all of the former victories.

That might be true, but bringing it up in a conversation about a different solution to a different problem in a tone that suggests that people shouldn't be trying to use less plastic straws (especially when most of them have no connection to the fishing industry) isn't helpful.

If you care about it, talk about it in the context of fishing, don't just bring it up as a way to snarkily shut down people doing something good, no matter how small.

This is exactly the kind of "plausible deniability" tactics that people who actively push to disregard all environmental concerns use.

But for any sort of rational cost/benefit analysis, the plastic straw wins. Lower energy cost than a disposable paper straw, it works better, feels better, and (while I'm not positive of this) lower monetary cost too. And when you consider how few straws make it into the oceans from California, there are far more worthy targets. Or, to put it another way - banning plastic straws is a passable way to reduce the number of straws added to the ocean. It's a really shitty way to reduce plastic.

It's things like this (and opposition to nuclear, and refusal to consider geoengineering) that make people skeptical of the general environmental movement. After all, if this was such a huge problem... People would be trying to actually solve it instead of virtue signalling.

Not all plastic pollution is created equal. Plastic straws are especially dangerous for sea turtles, in the same way that balloons are dangerous for sea birds and 6-pack rings are dangerous to both. People didn't single out plastic straws to "virtue signal".

As for 'the plastic straw wins', I'm unconvinced. The energy cost might be lower, but none of your other reasons factor in environmental cost at all. I don't think any amount of 'feels good' is worth any amount of environmental damage.

Lastly, even if it were entirely symbolic (which it isn't) there's still value in that.

The "you're just virtue signalling" bullshit is infuriating. People need to consider the possibility that some other human beings actually have empathy, or different values to their own.

Bamboo straws for both home and bar use are pretty neat. I don't know if its true for children, but for grown men and women it feel better, at least. And those cost a less (especially if you already have small bamboo home and friend with woodwork equipement).

Well said. It makes sense to be outraged by environmental degradation. But it is good to channel our efforts to help in those places where it is most helpful by orders of magnitude.

That said, this article is one of the few that really changed my perception. I admit that I have released many balloons over the years, joyfully, with the assumption that latex biodegrades. Now that I see how empirically dangerous they are to seabirds, I won't be so joyful and will surely share the facts instead of releasing the balloons.

The plastic straw does not win vs just not having a straw.

> Straws are a good one to single out too because a vast number of them come from just a few major fast food chains

At least in SE Asia, this is untrue. Nearly every single place that serves food puts a straw in your drink. From street vendors to restaurants.

I can agree with you that we need to keep bothering until it stops, but on a personal level after living in SE Asia for the last 3 years, I'm honestly of the opinion of trash being a hopeless problem on a global level.

Do they serve with straws because people actually want to suck their drink through them or are they just included as a signal for service quality?

Over here in Germany (a country exceptionally delusional about being good at environmentalism) tiny plastic spoons have suddenly become a standard feature at ice cream vendors. The only reasonably explanation is that businesses feared falling behind, an irrational fear of a plastic spoon gap. If they all just stopped including them without asking at the same time, nobody would lose (except for plastics manufacturers and their distributors I guess)

Sure, but the article calls out a variety of statistics that imply that balloons disproportionately good at killing animals.

Also, not doing balloon releases has literally no real drawbacks. I we can't get affect change here, we're so fucked.

Yes, we are fucked.

Of course the article calls out statistics about balloons, because the article is about balloons. There is any number of ways that animals can die from trash.

You want to change things? Figure out a way to make biodegradable balloons less expensive than the rubber ones. Figure out a way to bio-engineer a bacteria that breaks down the rubber ones.

Reality is that getting people to stop releasing balloons, worldwide, isn't going to happen from a blog post or any amount of education or laws discouraging it.

> Figure out a way to make biodegradable balloons less expensive than the rubber ones

That's easy: Tax rubber balloons so they're more expensive than biodegradable ones, done.

The article says they're the main cause of death due to litter for seabirds.

It may not be a huge impact, but it's one of the easiest things to solve. It's just pointlessly messy and doesn't need to be a thing.

And like most problems we approach them in small, manageable steps.