// This is a machine generated transcript. Please report any transcription errors to will-help@illinois.edu.

[00:00:00]
Brian Mackey: It's The 21st Show. I'm Brian Mackey.

[00:00:06]
Speaker 1: Would you like to [ride] among the stars[?]

[00:00:28]
Brian Mackey: All right, we are concluding our Earth Day program with the subject of balloons — not hot air balloons as the Fifth Dimension was singing about there, but the kind you find at parties, and specifically the kind that are released at celebrations. Could be something positive, something festive, could be following the death of a loved one. Some people see a balloon release as [symbolic] of a journey to the afterlife. 

But the problem is, balloons that are released into the air can have an effect on our environment once they come back down to the ground, or maybe even while they're still in the air. This is a problem that's been known for a while. We got a text from Laurel, who shared with us a letter to the editor she sent to the Southern Illinoisan back in 1988. It reads in part, "Balloon releases are increasingly popular for a variety of events from weddings to advertising. While bearing good intentions, participants are perhaps unaware of the harm that can be caused by this practice. The world's beaches are littered by millions of balloons released worldwide. Over a million were released at one time by Disneyland and hundreds of thousands at the U.S. Bicentennial." Thanks for sharing that message, Laurel. 

Fast forward to the present day, and a Girl Scout in the Chicago suburbs is looking to change that once again. Emma Wright is a high school junior at Vernon Hills High and is working on her Gold Award for Troop 45315. For that, she helped promote Senate Bill 2743 in the Illinois Senate. [She] joins me now to talk more about the effects balloons can have on the environment as well as the proposed legislation. Emma, welcome to The 21st Show.

[00:02:06]
Emma Wright: Hi, thank you so much for having me.

[00:02:08]
Brian Mackey: And listeners, you can join us today at 800-222-9455. That's 800-222-9455. Have you ever been part of a balloon release? Have you thought about what happens when they come back down? Or, or maybe you've even found an old balloon on the ground or in a river, in a lake or something like that. Let us know. 800-222-9455. 

All right, Emma, before we get to your project, just tell me a little bit about the Gold Award. What does it require of you?

[00:02:38]
Emma Wright: So the Gold Award is the highest award that a Girl Scout can earn. It's the equivalent of the Eagle Scout for Boy Scouts. It requires leadership, sometimes public speaking, a minimum of 80 hours, and there's prerequisites like the Silver Award and Journey Awards.

[00:02:56]
Brian Mackey: OK, so as we said, you're focusing on balloon releases. What got you interested in this topic?

[00:03:02]
Emma Wright: Yeah, so I've cared about the environment longer than I can remember, and in fifth grade I actually read an article about the tons of negative effects that balloon releases have, and that kind of is what inspired this. And then I just kept that in the back of my mind when I was starting my project as a freshman in high school.

[00:03:20]
Brian Mackey: Well, so what are some of the things that you read about at that time to, you know, that are problematic for balloon releases?

[00:03:27]
Emma Wright: Yeah, so the thing that stuck with me the most was actually a photo of a bird that had been entangled in the ribbon of the balloon, but then there were so many like statistics about how, especially in the Great Lakes region, between 2016 and 2018, like over 18,000 pieces of balloons were found on the shorelines. So these statistics about how like horrible it is were really sticking with me and inspired me to make this the focus of my project.

[00:03:54]
Brian Mackey: Yeah. So let's get into some of the details. So what are some of the things that can happen in the environment, you know, go through the variety of them in the air, on the ground, in the water, wherever.

[00:04:06]
Emma Wright: Yeah, so, specifically for the Great Lakes, it affects the seabirds which can eat the fragments of balloons, and that makes them — they're 32 times more likely to die from eating the balloon fragments than if they were to eat hard plastics. And then if we go to more like farmland, like rural areas, the goats are actually attracted to Mylar balloons, and horses can be spooked by the balloons, and when they're ingested, obviously that could be really harmful. It can block the animal's digestive tracts, so it costs a lot of animals' lives when they're released.

[00:04:45]
Brian Mackey: Yeah, and I guess there is a difference here. Maybe you can talk about the difference between these, you know, the, you said Mylar — these are the metallic balloons, they might be in the shape of a number or have a cartoon character on them or something. Different from the sort of classic clown holding a balloon, kind of just plain colorful rubber latex balloon.

[00:05:05]
Emma Wright: Yeah, so the Mylar are, yes, you're right, the Mylar, the metallic balloons, they actually take a significantly longer time to degrade than the latex balloons do, but both are very harmful.

[00:05:19]
Brian Mackey: OK. So we'll get to the law, or I should say the legislation, the proposed law in a moment here. But how have you worked to raise awareness of this issue?

[00:05:30]
Emma Wright: So I'm really just focusing on trying to educate people so that they understand what the effects of releasing a balloon does, 'cause I think a lot of people don't realize the harmful effects it has. So really I think the education is one of the biggest parts and raising awareness.

[00:05:49]
Brian Mackey: What does that look like in practice? Are you like going to senior centers or schools or, you know, blog posts or how does that work in 20[25] for you?

[00:05:59]
Emma Wright: I've been doing like a wide variety of things to raise awareness. One of the biggest things I did was I had a [lemonade] sale in Chicago at the NBC Tower and I got to have a QR code where I could kind of promote and raise awareness for the legislation and people were able to scan the QR code and see their state senator for where they live and then they would have the ability to contact their senator to, as the constituents, promote and like say that they were in support of the bill.

[00:06:29]
Brian Mackey: Yeah. All right, let me take a moment to remind listeners, if you're just joining us, this is The 21st Show. I'm Brian Mackey. We're talking about the effects that releasing balloons can have on our environment. It's become popular to release a bunch of balloons for fun, as a form of symbolism, and you might see them slowly disappear. You typically don't see what happens afterwards, however. They can pile up in our environment. They don't break down all that easily. 

There's actually a famous example out of Cleveland, Ohio back in 1986, something called Balloonfest. I'm gonna read here from a Case Western Reserve University account. On that afternoon, the square was filled with nearly 1.5 million balloons which were inflated by a corps of volunteers and staged for a massive single release. Strong winds blew many of the balloons north of the city, and rain caused the balloons to fall immediately. The balloons also caused the runway at Burke Lakefront Airport to shut down and prevented the Coast Guard from finding two fishermen who had fallen off their boat. Falling balloons also littered much of the city and clogged the area's waterways. Traffic accidents occurred throughout the city as drivers attempted to dodge falling balloons. Again, that was in Cleveland, 1986. 

We're talking about this today, 202[5], with Emma Wright, a high school junior, Vernon Hills High, a Girl Scout in Troop 45315, working toward her Gold Award, which, as we said a few moments ago, is sort of the Girl Scout equivalent of the Eagle Scout Award. And as part of that, she is helping push legislation that is being considered in the Illinois General Assembly. If you wanna join us, 800-222-9455. That's 800-222-9455. 

So, tell me about this legislation. How do you hope it would address balloon releases?

[00:08:29]
Emma Wright: So the main focus is to amend the Environmental Protection Act, and it is bipartisan, so it is really beneficial for everyone in Illinois, and basically our hope is just to educate people so that they understand that balloon releases, how negative they are for the environment, and just to ban them so that no one can do them anymore and hopefully we can help save the lives of animals and just protect the environment.

[00:08:55]
Brian Mackey: Can you speak to what other states have done with regard to some of these balloon laws?

[00:09:02]
Emma Wright: Yeah, so there are actually a lot of states that have already banned balloon releases. Some are like Florida, California, Tennessee, Hawaii, there's tons that have already made this ban.

[00:09:15]
Brian Mackey: Interesting, both the red states and blue states. I think I read that California even just banned the sale of Mylar balloons. So, sorry, Timmy, no Paw Patrol balloon at your birthday party. But, you know, on a more serious note, people do use these, as I mentioned, it's sort of like even [a] funeral context, right? A celebration of life. What alternatives would you recommend if people, you know, want to do something big and symbolic, but, you know, maybe not a balloon release?

[00:09:44]
Emma Wright: Yeah, so [there are] actually a wide variety of alternatives. Some people have made the switch to instead planting trees or making memorial gardens to kind of preserve the legacy or honor the life of a person, and that idea is actually something that's going to grow over time, which is a really beautiful honor of a person's life. But for the people that really like the idea of something rising up to heaven, for example, there are people that have made the switch to instead doing something smaller like flying a kite or blowing bubbles, 'cause that has the same idea of being up in the air and getting closer to heaven without the negative effects that balloon releases do.

[00:10:25]
Brian Mackey: All right, so just a few minutes left. I wonder — you're sort of living out, I don't know if you might be too young for this, but Schoolhouse Rock, right? "I'm Just a Bill," the legislative process. What do you think, getting this up close view of our democratic process?

[00:10:40]
Emma Wright: It's been really interesting to kind of get a closer and more in-depth view of how it works to pass a law, and it's been really eye opening as well.

[00:10:53]
Brian Mackey: Well, the process has been slow, right? I mean, this is not — this version of the legislation is not the first attempt, I understand it. It previously passed in the Illinois House, but sort of did not then pass the Senate. What do you think of the pace of legislative change here?

[00:11:08]
Emma Wright: It definitely is a little slow, and I think it can be frustrating, but it also is important to just make sure that everyone understands and supports the bill and it's kind of just like the history that we have of checks and balances and making sure that everyone is supporting the laws that are being passed.

[00:11:27]
Brian Mackey: You know, earlier in the program we were talking about Earth Day and we had a caller who objected to the way we frame Earth Day as, or I should say frame environmental problems as a crisis, right? She said it's a challenge. Think of it as a challenge. And there is a lot of talk about how young people can be pretty sad about the state of our environment and our inaction on what we're doing about it. I wonder how you think about that, how you hear your peers, if you do. Do you talk about the environment and things that are of concern, the challenges we're facing?

[00:12:02]
Emma Wright: Yeah, I think we definitely do have like some understanding of all of the problems that are going on and I personally have had conversations about environmental concerns with my friends, but I think we do try to stay positive about how we can all make an impact and even like doing the smaller things can really help for the future.

[00:12:23]
Brian Mackey: What would you say to other people your age about, you know, pursuing big goals, right? Trying to get a law passed in the Illinois General Assembly. That's a pretty big deal.

[00:12:32]
Emma Wright: Yeah, I mean, I think I would say like it definitely seems pretty daunting, but I think you just have to push through all of the obstacles and in the end it will be rewarding, and it's gonna leave a lasting impact that'll outlive you and it'll make the world better for all the generations to come.

[00:12:49]
Brian Mackey: Last question. Give[n] this experience you've had, what other environmental projects or topics do you hope to work on in the future?

[00:12:58]
Emma Wright: I think — this is definitely like a lot bigger of an issue, but I think just like trying to ban like more different types of single-use plastics is definitely gonna be really, really beneficial in the future.

[00:13:12]
Brian Mackey: That is a big one. I know there are some Illinois lawmakers who have been working on that for a very long time. I'm sure they'd be happy to have your help. Emma Wright, good luck with your pursuit of the Gold Award in the Girl Scouts and thanks so much for sharing it with us today on The 21st Show.

[00:13:28]
Emma Wright: Yes, thank you so much.

[00:13:40]
Speaker 3: [While building a little toy shop, buy a bag of balloons with the money we got, set them free at the break of dawn till one by one they were gone. Back at base, bugs in the software flash the message. Something's out there. Floating in the summer skies. 99 red balloons go by.]

[00:14:09]
Brian Mackey: All right, I think a song about balloon [releases] leading to a nuclear war is probably an appropriate way to think about Earth Day 202[5]. I wanna thank everyone who joined us today, Emma Wright, as well as Jack [Darin] of the Sierra Club and Jennifer Walling of the Illinois Environmental Council. That is it for us today. 

Coming up tomorrow, it's been [2.5] years since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. [Maoz Inon], an Israeli, and Aziz Abu Sara, a Palestinian, have both lost family members in the midst of decades of fighting in the region. And yet they believe a lasting peace is possible. We'll talk with them about their new book, "The Future Is Peace." That's coming up tomorrow here on The 21st Show, which is produced by Christine Hatfield and Jose Zepeda. Our digital producer is Kulsoom Kahn. Technical direction and engineering from Jason Croft and Steve Morck. Reginald Hardwick is our news director. The 21st Show is a production of Illinois Public Media. I'm Brian Mackey. Thanks for listening. We'll talk with you again tomorrow.