UK Nature and Environment

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It's time to ban balloon releases and sky lanterns (www.thenational.scot)

submitted 1 day ago by GreyShuck@feddit.uk to c/nature@feddit.uk

14 comments fedilink hide all child comments

IT was less than a hundred years ago that people began releasing helium balloons as a means to celebrate. Since then, balloon releases have expanded to nearly every special occasion. From weddings to memorials, graduations to gender reveals, festivals to New Year’s Eve celebrations, each year sees millions of balloons released.

Helium balloons can float in the air for days and can land anywhere – land, trees, or water - littering the environment and becoming a danger to wildlife, farmed animals, and companion animals that may come across them and mistake them for something edible.

Studies show that more than 265 species of birds, fish, mammals, and marine turtles, including endangered and threatened species, have ingested or become entangled in marine debris, largely from balloon litter.

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[–] tetris11@feddit.uk 2 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

Plastic, yes, bad.

But a chinese lantern made of thin metal and paper, released on a wet winter day? I can't see that doing harm.

[–] Denjin@feddit.uk 4 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Except when the metal framework ends up in the sea or tangled up in a tree.

[–] tetris11@feddit.uk 0 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

probably a stupid question but is metal bad for the sea?

[–] Denjin@feddit.uk 3 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

It's non-biodegradable litter so yes?

[–] kerrigan778@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 9 hours ago

Mild steel in seawater is aggressively biodegradable. Probably more so than a lot of biodegradable bioplastics.

[–] tetris11@feddit.uk 1 points 10 hours ago

I was envisioning more that it wouldn't degrade, and was just an inert frame that coral could nucleate off.

But metal corrodes, which I suppose could be toxic indeed