Now, it’s kind of like, well, duh. Everyone knows straws are bad.

I think that’s how I’m going to look at this Investigation a year from now.

Although honestly, the evils of balloons have been known for awhile. The New York Times printed an article about the horrors of balloons as far back as 1990. Finally, we’re paying attention.

Clemson University used to release 10,000 balloons before football games and banned that tradition in the summer of 2018. One town in Rhode Island has even banned the sale and use of balloons altogether.

Turns out when you get down to it, balloons are another single-use plastic-item that ends up either in the bellies of wildlife, ‘disappearing’ as microplastics or parking in a landfill forever.

Although some latex balloons are marketed as “biodegradable“, it’s really just greenwashing and the balloon will hang around for years, harming wildlife and causing power outages.

The biggest problem with balloons is mass-releases (or even the occasional flyaway), even though they’re already illegal in some states and cities.

Although a helium balloon can rise to five miles above the earth, it’s not as if they stay there.

In the best case scenario, they’ll float down and end up as litter on some lucky highway where they can be picked up by prisoners. But most often, they end up in the oceans where they will be mistaken as food. In fact, one turtle found had four different balloons in its stomach.