Forester, author, birder, hunter, and naturalist Ethan Tapper (@howtoloveaforest), who runs an Instagram account with 21,000 followers, was recently asked what the most common trash item foresters find in the woods is. He responded with a video of himself holding up a mylar "Happy Birthday!" balloon.
"You ever think about what happens when you let a balloon fly away?" Ethan captioned the post. "Anybody who spends a lot of time in the woods knows how common it is to find all kinds of balloons in the woods."
Although they might not have been many people's first guess for the most common type of forest litter, mylar balloons (which are made out of a thin plastic film) are a sneakily big problem for our natural environment.
This is true not just in the woods but in the oceans as well, which is where a lot of floating balloons also end up. Marine animals frequently mistake these colorful pieces of plastic for food and ingest them, fatally choking themselves or blocking their digestive systems in the process. Animals can also get tangled in the balloons.
Plastic pollution is a huge problem for our planet — over eight million tons of it (counting everything, not just balloons) escapes into the oceans every year, according to National Geographic.
While the brunt of this problem falls on the corporations that insist on creating endless amounts of new plastic, there is also no excuse for individuals to wantonly litter.
Even though it is probably fun in the moment to release a helium-filled balloon into the sky, we should recognize that the balloon will not simply cease to exist and could, in fact, end up killing a wild animal after it makes its way back down to Earth.
Ethan's Instagram followers commiserated with him about how many discarded balloons they've found in nature.
"Very accurate! I've found a handful over the last years. So [eerie] to come across in the deep forest," wrote one commenter.
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"We find some in the prairie every year. They certainly don't decompose either," wrote another.
"I totally agree. Surprisingly common," another commenter chimed in.
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