By Imogène Taveau, Year 13
In the middle school’s recent Peace Day celebrations, large numbers of white helium balloons were set off into the sky, spreading the middle school students’ messages of peace. While this is indeed a very sweet, well-meaning idea, in celebrating peace they are harming the environment by releasing these balloons, even if they were biodegradable. Is it really necessary to harm the environment for the sake of a celebration?
Before looking at the impact these helium balloons have on the environment itself, it is important to think about how these helium balloons affect wildlife across the world, especially marine creatures. Whenever a balloon is released into the environment, it must come down again somewhere else, more often than not in the ocean. Whether they come down on water or on land, local wildlife often ingests the remains of these balloons due to their bright, attractive colours, causing serious harm to those animals. On top of this, animals can get entangled in the remains of the balloons, a fatal issue if not released.
As well as harming the animal life with the debris from these balloons, they also litter the land and oceans and are a large contributing factor to infamous North Atlantic Garbage Patch and unfortunately the whole “biodegradable balloons” concept is a misleading title of environmental benefit. Whilst natural latex itself is indeed biodegradable and is perfectly harmless for the environment, it is treated with chemicals such as ammonia and contains plasticiser, increasing the harm done to the environment.
As well as this, the helium itself has a negative impact on the environment due to its unsustainability. Instead of wasting helium on something as trivial as some balloons, helium is needed for far more important materials such as MRI scanners and fibre optics. University of Cambridge chemist Dr Wothers said back in 2012 “The scarcity of helium is a really serious issue. I can imagine that in 50 years time our children will be saying, ‘I can’t believe they used such a precious material to fill balloons’”.
So why do we insist on using helium balloons for celebrations? Well, there are many answers to that question; they’re brightly coloured, they carry a message, and they’re quite simply fun to use. This festive nature can be found outside of balloons however; the Clearwater Marine Aquarium suggests using bubbles, banners, streamers, kites, pinwheels, flags and floating flowers as celebratory alternatives. This goes to show that entertaining as they may be, there are environmentally-friendly alternatives to the harmful helium balloons, perhaps the time has come to reconsider the decorations for your next celebration.
