The group is trying to reduce pollution caused by balloon debris

Brut America

"Most people wouldn't litter balloons on the ground, but they don't think twice when letting them go."  Balloons are killing animals and destroying the planet. Here's how Balloons Blow is fighting the balloon industry.

Transcript

00:00When they burst, they look like, they can look like colorful foliage or jellies in the ocean.

00:07The animals go towards the balloon for food,

00:10and then if a ribbon's attached, then they end up getting tangled in that too.

00:22Sea turtles often eat them. It's the number one marine debris killer of seabirds,

00:28and they can cause harm to any animal they can come in contact with.

00:49The balloon industry markets the latex balloons as biodegradable, but that's not true. They last

00:56years in the environment. I still have some sitting in my backyard. I think it's going on

01:00eight years now, maybe even more. Latex balloons are the type of balloon

01:04most commonly found in the stomachs of dead animals.

01:15Me and my family, my parents and my sister, we've always just been outside enjoying nature and stuff

01:20and just always hanging out at the beach. And when we were younger, getting choked up,

01:27there wasn't that much garbage. And just as it goes on and on, there's just more and more garbage.

01:33And then we started finding balloons, and we were like, what the heck's going on?

01:38And it seemed like all the balloon pollution correlated with the rise of social media.

01:44Facebook and Instagram both started, I think, around like 2005.

01:54Balloons, you know, released in the middle of the country can land way out in the ocean.

01:59Balloons, you know, released out on the seashore can end up thousands of miles in the forests.

02:07Most people wouldn't litter balloons on the ground, but they don't think twice when letting them go.

02:12What goes up must come down, and everything has an impact.

02:30The Balloon Council was started in 1990 to basically fight any laws that came up.

02:39There was some Girl Scouts in New Jersey who wanted to start a law to ban balloon releases,

02:47and the Balloon Council started and put a kibosh to that. The Balloon Council is a very powerful

02:54lobby. People think the balloon industry is just a bunch of clowns, but it's not. They're

02:59money-hungry, greedy. They just want to keep pushing their product for as long as they can,

03:04and they want to keep people in the dark.

03:09They definitely started ramping up when Balloons Blow came along because we just like kind of put

03:22the information out there, and then we started our Facebook page and Instagram and like really

03:26spreading the word, and then so like people had the information to stop balloon releases in their

03:32area and just, you know, bring more attention to it. Emston University is a college over here,

03:39and they used to release balloons for I think like 40 years, and after seven years of campaigning,

03:46emailing, calling, doing posts, they finally ended their balloon release tradition.

03:52After 35 years, the school is ending its massive release of balloons.

03:56It's the latest sign of a rising environmental debate.

04:02A lot of people are releasing balloons for like awareness, for like medical issues, or like, you

04:15know, cancer, premature babies, and that type of thing, but they don't realize that helium is a

04:20finite resource, and it's needed in the medical industry. They need it for MRIs and like the

04:27incubators and stuff, and scientists warn we shouldn't be wasting it on balloons.

04:37There's many alternatives depending on like if it's for a celebration or memorial,

04:42but for like celebrations, you could do bubbles, pinwheels, ribbon dancers,

04:49memorials, maybe like planting a tree or like starting a flower garden or butterfly garden

04:55to promote more life. A lot of people suggest sky lanterns as an alternative, but those are

05:02deadly and harmful too. Luckily, more people are becoming aware of the impacts of balloons.

05:08It kind of like, you know, goes forward a little bit, goes back, goes forward. The balloon industry

05:12has like since changed their stance and don't necessarily encourage balloon releases anymore,

05:17but they're still pushing, you know, the balloon arches. It's still very, very wasteful, and we

05:24just don't need to be participating in that anymore when there's so many alternatives.

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