As spring quickly arrives and summer approaches outdoor parties increase in frequency and with that so does decorating. Unfortunately, many people choose to decorate with balloons or have a balloon release and celebration of a person’s birthday, the anniversary date, or wedding.
While balloons floating in the air up, up, and away does look pretty there are severe consequences for unsuspecting wildlife. Wildlife ranging from sea turtles to waterfowl and elks to owls are injured or killed by what we mistakenly think is an innocuous celebration. After all it is only a balloon – how much harm could it possibly do?
Last spring, my husband and I hiked Mount Airy forest. There was a large party of people having a family reunion and they decorated with balloons.
One of the many problems with doing this was like any spring day–it was windy. And the balloons soon got away and were blown into the woodline.
As we hiked, my husband and I took it upon ourselves to clean up the balloon debris that obviously was not going to be cleaned up by this group.
It saddens me greatly that people might unknowingly be doing great harm to the nature that they come out to enjoy.
There is no need to celebrate with the balloons. There are plenty of alternatives to using balloons and I don’t believe that any birthday party, anniversary, wedding celebration has ever been ruined because of the lack of balloons.
In researching this article, I came across this website balloonsblow.org which has plenty of information on how much damage the balloons due to the environment as well as great alternatives to using the balloons.
I’d like to see balloon releases banned as well as state, city, and local parks banning the use of balloons inside of the park property. But, I doubt that will happen.
So please help the environment by sharing this post with your friends and relatives and hopefully we can get balloons to be something of the past rather than killing our wildlife and polluting the environment.