Biodegradable balloons leave me feeling a little deflated
Six months ago, I stumbled across a news story that pondered: we’ve picked on straws; are balloons the next environmental baddies?
It was an interesting read, and so, as always, were the comments.
Ban balloons, some people insisted. They’re completely unnecessary, and an environmental scourge. It’s a small price to pay to protect our ecosystems.
Ban Christmas and birthday parties while you’re at it, others retorted, and since you’re villainising latex, let’s get rid of condoms, too. And anyway, balloons are biodegradable, so what’s the problem?
I agree that of all the environmental issues we face, balloons are the brightly coloured helium-plumped tip of the iceberg, but the biodegradability claim made me deeply suspicious. I’ve never seen anyone bulking out their compost bin with leftover party inflatables.
I asked Google what balloons were made of. Rubber, latex, polychloroprene or a nylon fabric, apparently. I asked: are balloons biodegradable? Turns out that it depends on who you ask.
The websites of party supply companies and balloon manufacturers consistently spoke of organic natural latex, sustainable rubber trees and 100 per cent biodegradability. ‘‘Our products break down at the same rate as an oak leaf,’’ they cooed.
I looked back at the story on Stuff, in which the reporter had talked with a local balloon artist. ‘‘Oak leaf,’’ she insisted.
It sounded like propaganda to me, and I closed the website, muttering, ‘‘Bollocks’’.
‘‘What’s a bollocks, Mum?’’ asked my wandering four-year-old. After a pause, I told him that people were saying that balloons could be composted like leaves, and that I thought they were probably wrong.
Because I’d already been called out on my opinion (in passing, by a preschooler who was really just hunting me down to inquire if he could watch some Dinosaur Train, but still), I felt like I needed to put it to the test.
I went to the supermarket to buy natural latex balloons. They didn’t stock them, or if they did, the packets weren’t labelled as such.
I went to Motueka’s other supermarket. They didn’t have latex balloons either.
The town’s two novelty shops had, between them, 102 hooks of balloons. I painstakingly read the back of every single packet, and found that only seven of the hooks were displaying balloons that were labelled as some variation of ‘‘100% biodegradable natural rubber latex’’.
I randomly selected three of the seven brands, already astonished at how hard it was to buy balloons that even claimed to be biodegradable.
On the way home, I found an oak tree in a public park, carefully removing five leaves from a drooping branch. ‘‘It’s for science!’’ I said feebly to a woman who looked at me askance as she walked by.
When my children discovered my loot, they were delighted. ‘‘Balloons!’’ they cheered. ‘‘No,’’ I told them sternly. ‘‘These balloons are not for fun. They are for science.’’
The children regarded me patiently. ‘‘I want a green one,’’ the four-year-old eventually said, pointing to a green one. ‘‘I want a blue one,’’ the two-year-old said, pointing to a yellow one.
There was another pause, and then I relented and filled their orders, giving them strict instructions to return the balloon carcasses to me when they inevitably popped, so that I could dispose of them properly. I’d already bought them, and I’m not denying that balloons are like catnip for children.
A scientific experiment prepared by someone who studied the arts is always going to be a little dubious, but I tried my best to set it up properly.
My older son and I had great fun blowing up and then deflating 15 balloons – five from each packet – to replicate real-life conditions of abandoned party decorations.
Five stations were chosen around the section to act as the balloon grave sites – on a patch of grass, on some bark mulch, on bare dirt under the weed mat on the greenhouse floor, in the worm farm, and buried in the vegetable garden. Each station had three balloons – one from each brand – and, nestled carefully beside them, the famed oak leaf.
A scientist friend latched on to the experiment with delight. ‘‘What’s your hypothesis?’’ she demanded. I stared at her blankly. ‘‘Um… that the leaves decompose before the balloons?’’ She nodded, satisfied with my attempt at science.
I dutifully checked the sites three weeks later. The oak leaves were browning, but otherwise, no change.
By the 10-week mark, the leaves above ground were crisp. There was a scrap of leaf left in the worm farm, and a curled fragment under the weed mat. I couldn’t find the one in the garden.
All of the balloons were still looking pretty good – the ones in the open air were beginning to feel a little dry, but the ones in the garden were still so pliable that I was tempted to try to inflate them. (I didn’t. They were grimy.)
A few months into the experiment, I researched online how long it actually takes for an oak leaf to biodegrade. Turns out this wasn’t an arbitrary comparison by the balloon companies. Oak leaves are hardy and stubborn, due to their waxy surfaces and high lignin content. They can take years to break down. Using the same time frame, a balloon loose in the environment has plenty of opportunity to do damage.
Despite their protective lignins, four of my five oak leaves had completely disappeared within the space of my six-month experiment – only the one on the shady bark was still identifiable.
The deflated balloons still looked like deflated balloons. When I stretched them, some were starting to show small holes in the necks, but most were still as supple as when they were removed from the packet.
The hypothesis has been confirmed, and it seems pretty clear that the rather ambiguous comparison about balloons and oak leaves is more lie than truth.
In the meantime, I’ve told my partner that he can stop mowing around my little balloon graveyard on the side of the lawn.
I’ve never seen anyone bulking out their compost bin with leftover party inflatables.