When you think of balloons, you think of party or a celebration. No child’s birthday party celebration, young or old, is complete without balloons.

The different sizes, colours, shapes bring joy to people. Not only do we gift them for birthdays, but for new births, when someone is recovering, christenings. Balloons can be used at a time of sadness too. 

Mass balloon releases allows us to show respect for our loved ones who have departed, you can’t deny that the way the helium balloons rise into the sky is quite graceful. However, releasing latex balloons (or any other material like foil balloons with a metallic coating, rubber balloon, ) like this has a downside; it has an environmental impact and hurts wildlife and marine life. 

Whenever we’re at a party, friends and family tend to give my 4-year-old a balloon at the end of the night. I won’t lie, the smile it brings to her face fills me with joy, however, deep down I’m thinking ‘how on earth am I going to dispose of that’. There’s no part of it that can be recycled; the balloon, the ribbon or the weight. Even biodegradable balloons have their issues. Although, there are some balloons on the market that claim they are biodegradable, they can usually take years to fully decompose and the damage done in the meantime, by turning into balloon fragments, can last longer than the balloon.

Reasons why we should start saying no to the use of balloons and encourage the balloon industry to do better. 

They are harmful to wildlife

We’ve seen it on TV and David Attenborough has told us that certain wildlife will mistake floating plastic bags or balloon for food. Turtles will mistake them for Jellyfish. Once ingested, the damage this does to them internally can lead to starvation. The string attached to the balloons cause just as much damage in their digestive tract. The balloon string could be ingested or wrap itself around a sea turtles neck, eventually choking them to death. If the choking doesn’t kill them, the cuts to their skin caused by the string can cause infections and will probably kill them.

It’s littering

If you think about it, a helium-filled balloons release seems to be an ‘accepted form of littering’. WHY? You would never dream of leaving all your rubbish on the grass after a picnic (normal people wouldn’t) and sensible people would clean up after themselves but when a balloon is released and disappears from view, what goes up must come down. Where do we think these released balloons are going to land? On a farm? In a river? If the release is by the sea, these plastic balloons will almost certainly will end up in the ocean and affect marine animals breaking into smaller pieces. We’ve seen the damage plastic straws do to the environment.

There’s a helium shortage

I was a little shocked when I found out there was a shortage and even more shocked at what helium is used for aside balloons. Helium is used in other (more important) areas of business and exploration; inside MRI Scanners & MRI machines, as a cooling agent for the Large Hadron Collider, it’s used in space exploration as a cooling agent for equipment and even by deep sea divers. I’m a little surprised in light of this, why the sale of helium isn’t more restricted? I hope you would agree that these other uses are more vital that filling up a balloon for a party.

What can you use instead?

Balloon release events – can be replaced by releasing flowers into the sea, or even planting a tree or create a flower garden in your back garden. Planting a tree in a quiet place can be somewhere you can come for time on your own to think and think about your loved one. They may no longer be with you but their memory will.

Birthday Parties / celebrations – Paper chains are really easy to make and your little one(s) can get involved too. Paper flowers and colourful streamers are a really great example of adding colour to a party, there are oodles of videos on youtube to choose from and when the party is over, they can be given to the guests as they leave as memento. There’s nothing wrong with using the traditional banners, bunting and decorations you can buy on the high street and storing them in the wrappers they came in. However, the key is to not purchase decorations with a number on them, this way they can be used over and over again. Trust me, no one is going to think “Weren’t they the same banners at Wendy’s birthday last year?’

For a treat, I take my 4-year-old to McDonald’s and I recently started to explain why she shouldn’t accept a balloon when it is offered by one of the employees, my daughter now says ‘no thank you’ and it makes me so proud. It doesn’t seem to bother her that she’s not getting a colourful balloon as long as she’s got ketchup with her chips, all is good in the world.

By using alternatives to balloons, it’s a great way to allow you to be more creative and the whole family can join in to make the day special. You’d be surprised how much stuff you already have around the house for materials.

By saying no to balloon pollution, you are protecting the environment and wildlife too.

Updated Feb 2024