T. Boone Pickens YMCA Throws Balloon Litter Into the Sky
Yesterday the downtown T. Boone Pickens YMCA celebrated its new branding (they’ve got a fancy new “Y” logo) by doing a balloon release from atop their building as onlookers in the CitySquare parking lot cheered. I caught a glimpse of the proceedings (and a couple photos) from our 21st-floor offices a block away.
My understanding is that balloon releases are a no-no. Sure, the balloons are pretty as they float away, but what goes up must come down. Critters can eat the latex, producing bad results. Accordingly, some states have outlawed balloon releases. Balloon advocates will say this concern is overblown, that a latex balloon will biograde just as quickly as an oak leaf. Well, sure. But it takes two years for an oak leaf to biodegrade, and you don’t have to worry about animals eating an oak leaf and choking on it. Seems that marine animals are the most likely to mistake balloons for food (because they look like jellyfish), and Dallas isn’t exactly a breeding ground for sea turtles. But still.
Seems to me the YMCA could have saved some money on the balloons and helium and instead celebrated by — I don’t know — slaughtering a fattened goat and burning the thigh pieces so that the black smoke rose to the heavens and pleased the gods. I’m not an event organizer. I’ll leave the details to someone else.
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5 comments
Additionally, as part of the Pickens Plan, all of the balloons were filled with Natural Gas. According to Wikipedia (see entry for “Lighter than air”): Methane (the chief component of natural gas) is sometimes used as a lift gas when hydrogen and helium are not available. It has the advantage of not leaking through balloon walls as rapidly as the small-moleculed hydrogen and helium. (Many lighter-than-air balloons are made of aluminized plastic that limits such leakage; hydrogen and helium leak rapidly through latex balloons.)
Dibs on the band name “Baloon Advocates”.
In unrelated news, I’ve just been given a fancy full size locker at the YMCA. Seems the previous owner vacated it just this afternoon…
Explosive Balloons. Pure Insanity!
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Latex balloons are sometimes confused with plastic items and lumped in with the plastics litter problem. The often used phrase, “latex balloons and other plastics” is improper. Latex is not a plastic. It’s organic, made from the sap of rubber trees collected through an absolutely harmless tapping process very simple to that used for collecting the maple sap used for making syrup.
Moreover, latex balloons are totally biodegradable — the only type of balloon used in a professionally-produced mass release. A latex balloon’s molecular structure begins breaking down with inflation and gathers momentum when exposed to sunlight and the atmosphere. Within three hours, most latex balloons released into the atmosphere rise to approximately five miles, begin to oxidize, freeze and shatter into very small spaghetti-like pieces. Once on the ground gases and microorganisms attack the latex, continuing the natural decomposition process — even in the dark.