I met a dear friend for tea a few weeks ago in Highland Park. As I was walking back to my car, I saw, far up in the pristine blue sky, a red star mylar balloon. The sight is always so stunning and a bit romantic: the little, bright soldier floating in the vastness...until you realize the damage it's going to do once it most likely lands in the ocean. And so my heart sank (for more information regarding that subject, please read this post.)
You can imagine my delight when I finally reached my car and saw that the balloon had landed on an SUV a few cars over from mine. Clearly, this balloon picked me. Clearly, the responsibility of somehow recycling this balloon was now mine. So, I took it.
But how to recycle it?
A quick search online yielded dismal results. They are impossible to recycle at everyday commercial facilities. The options for up-cycling are:
1) You can deflate the balloon and then re-inflate it at a later date to reuse again. I didn't see that happening plus, on a separate topic, helium is one of the most precious and limited resources on the planet.
2) You can cut the balloon and reuse it as a "cute" baggie for wrapping gifts. If I went this route, that would mean the onus of properly disposing of the balloon would fall on someone else.
3) You can cut the balloon up into little strips of ribbons for wrapping gifts or cut it into tiny pieces for confetti. This honestly seemed like the worst option- cut up this plastic-y balloon into smaller pieces of plastic and then scatter them everywhere. Micro-plastics are such an immense problem - why would I knowingly add to the issue?
The problem with mylar balloons is that they are composed of both nylon and a metallic coating. This makes them very difficult to recycle. After scouring the web, my only option appeared to be TerraCycle.
TerraCycle is a program that takes your hard to recycle items, cleans them, separates the various materials of which the items are composed, and then recycles the items, often turning them into new objects. They have a partnership with Subaru and various other companies, where you can drop off your hard to recycle item in the box at the facility and they will ship in your junk for you. My problem is that the closest facility that has a TerraCycle box is located a little under 30 miles away. I've been stockpiling my husband's cleaned-out chip bags and our various dried out markers and pens (which you can also recycle using Crayola's program, more information here) for a while now.
So I finally broke down and bought a box. It wasn't cheap. But lately, as the climate crisis becomes more and more glaring, I've been asking myself what is the true cost of everything any way. And the balloon picked me, so I did it.
TerraCycle is NOT the solution. The solution is to not buy this stuff in the first place. But if you find yourself with hard to recycle items (and we all have them from time to time), or you simply can't give up eating chips, then purchasing a TerraCycle box or researching where is the nearest facility with a box, might be a good option for you.
For more information about TerraCycle, visit this website.
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