Hi Lemmy,
I’m organising a funeral, and one of the ideas that has come up is for people to write memories on a balloon and let them go. However, I’ve also heard that they often end up in trees etc and are terrible for the environment.
Is there such a thing as environmentally safe balloons? Other suggestions are also welcome.
Alternative: plantable wildflower seed cards you can write on and then plant and grow flowers
This is a great suggestion, thank you :)
Make sure they are native seeds for the area you’re doing this in!
But also be aware balloons can range for 100’s of miles before they come down.
I’ve been to a funeral where the guests wrote their farewells on slips of paper, which were then anonymously read by an officiant before being placed in a large ceramic pot with a small fire. It was much better than the traditional “Would anyone like to say something” followed by uncomfortable silence. People were much more willing to write down their thoughts for someone else to read.
Sorry for your loss.
You can use bio-degradable balloons but there is no guarantee they will not end up strangling birds or rendering squirrels immobile. Maybe something that could start degrading some hours after you release it? It might end up safely popped midair without ruining the lives of wildlife.
But let me just add: I think you should not do this at all. It’s too risky to do with traditional balloons, and it might be hard to find these “real/verified” biodegradable balloons, plus no guarantee they actually do what the backside says.
and it might be hard to find these “real/verified” biodegradable balloons
Also, “biodegradable” often means “in recycling facilities in a controlled environment using special machines and processing” when it comes to “biodegradable plastics” and not “just throw them anywhere and nature will handle it”.
Barely related, but a lot of people don’t know as much as they think they know about recycling. That symbol on the bottom of your plastic jugs, jars, etc that looks like the recycling symbol was the result of a campaign to intentionally mislead people into thinking that the containers are recyclable. Those symbols along with the number are identifiers for the types of plastic involved. Different recycling plants are equipped to process different materials, so I’m not saying that no plastic is recyclable, but you’re probably best off just assuming that your plant can’t handle your plastic. Why? Because if they can handle any plastic, it’s probably just one or two of them and you’d need to ask them to be sure, and you’d need to wash away all the food particles and remove labels and adhesive. I’ve heard that failing to do this can contaminate other material which renders that stuff unrecyclable as well, but I’m not sure that’s still true or ever was so don’t @ me on that point lol. I’m also not sure about sorting, but that could be necessary too. And after all that, it’s still very hard to recycle plastic, and you can probably only do it once or twice before it’s not usable anymore.
So what should we do with our plastic? Easy. Stop buying it. Okay, not so easy, but you can choose aluminum or glass containers instead wherever you have the choice. Any reduction is an improvement. Going a step further, see if you can’t reuse your plastic for something else before disposing. Once you’ve gotten a few uses out of it, then you can go through the process of recycling if it’s possible. I’m no genius for suggesting that, btw. That’s literally just what “reduce, reuse, recycle” is telling you to do. It’s in that order for a reason!
TED Talk complete. Hopefully most of you already knew this, but this was for the handful of people who didn’t know!
Okay, not so easy, but you can choose aluminum or glass containers instead wherever you have the choice.
That’s the thing, you usually don’t have that choice. Sure, you can often bring your own containers to buy food. You can also use reusable bags for groceries shopping. You also don’t need those stupid tiny plastic bags for vegetables and fruits. But the impact is very low.
No industry can operate without processing and using plastics and they’re not willing to change because it’s cheaper and easier right now and change would cost them money.
You’re completely correct, until enough of us buy other products to impact their bottom line. Scaled up production makes things cheaper per unit, but if demand drops out because we’re buying it less, then their cost per unit goes up. Then they raise prices to make up for it. Eventually alternatives become relatively competitive and then there’s a domino effect of more people jumping off of plastic. At least for some things. We will never get away from plastics entirely, but we’re way more wasteful than we need to be. There aren’t enough systemic incentives for companies to change their production, and there aren’t enough legislators willing to change that, but we can influence it a little bit by voting with our wallets. It’s very low impact, but talking about it in places like this can make the low impact a little bigger and lead to a bigger conversation about the global responsibility of industrialized nations to bear more of the burden because we can afford to. Idk I just don’t want to grow old and tell younger generations that we knew what we were doing was wrong and would hurt them but we just didn’t feel like doing anything about it.
I also just hate glass. I broke a jar the other day and thought I’d cleaned it up properly, but no. I’ve been picking nearly invisible pieces of glass out of my foot with tweezers for days. My feet are scratched to shit. Plastic is bad but glass sucks too.
Did you vacuum?
Yes.
Maybe some of the glass launched way further than it seemed and your feet are picking it up from there.
that’s interesting, I’ve never cleaned anything prior to putting it in the recycling bin - I suppose I see that as an issue that the company that’s doing the actual recycling is responsible for. it’s easier for me and if it’s not easy then I wont do it.
there is no guarantee they will not end up strangling birds or rendering squirrels immobile
At least they’ll decompose along with the body 🙄
Always a silver lining… of plastic around a bird’s neck.
There’s already a couple great suggestions offered here as alternatives to the harmful balloon idea. I just want to say thank you to OP for being thoughtful enough to ask the question in the first place. The world needs more people like you.
Thank you that’s very kind
Sorry for your loss
Another thing that I’m not seeing people mention is helium balloons wandering to places like power substations and/or power lines, causing outages or even fires/explosions depending.
I liked what someone else said about writing thoughts or stories and having them read anonymously.
The other comment touched on balloons so I had some other suggestions based on things that other cultures have done
Would lanterns be ok? They follow a similar principle, and they might be made of more biodegradable materials (paper lanterns).This isn’t something I’m familiar with though- There’s also the idea of setting something biodegradable ‘to sail’ on the water. Little paper boats with messages on them should be possible, and it would be easier to write something on them. You’d need a lake, and you’d need to check if the type of paper will dissolve, but it still feels better to me than balloons
Sorry for your loss
Lanterns are a pretty significant fire hazard, i’d avoid those too
Good point yes
If you mean the floating lanterns they’re usually made with wire and are a hazard to wildlife and domestic animals, as well as creating litter.
They may be made entirely of wood and paper, but as pointed out, fire hazard is still a thing
Lanterns are a plague on farmers unfortunately. We’ve picked out quite a few from hedges over the years, it’s just littering with extra steps.
Yeah… balloons end up in the sea and frequently turtles eat them thinking that their jellyfish. Dead sea turtles have been found stuffed full of plastic bags and balloons.
Paper lanterns end up setting things on fire far away.
Could you perhaps stop the magical disposable up-in-air thinking and do something else? Like write wishes on pieces of bark and hide them in a forest to break down harmlessly?
It’s not magical thinking at all, ceremonies like that provide genuine feelings of relief and catharsis for participants.
Sorry I missed the funeral part earlier.
I still don’t think balloons or fire lanterns are in any way responsible.
Paper boats are generally ok as they breakdown pretty quickly.
Paper boats on a lake or river?
rent a wall and provide cans of spray paint for people to leave inspiring tags.
then hire a company to clean the wall in a few days.
If you need balloons, latex is probably the way to go, natural material that should be fine to release.
Keep in mind some things labeled latex are made of synethic materials and therefore don’t decompose.
I haven’t seen that in stores or online but also haven’t looked. Should be possible to make i feel with the evolution of bioplastics.
An alternative is paper lanterns. I’ve seen versions that at least claim they’re safe in that they can’t start a forest fire. With the Chinese New Year coming up they should be easy to find.
