BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM
Balloons have always been made from natural latex, a material derived from rubber tree sap. Natural latex is biodegradable. The rubber tree has been producing it since before the first balloon was invented in 1824. On its own, it breaks down. The problem is what manufacturers do to it before it gets to you.
To convert liquid latex into elastic rubber, manufacturers put it through a process called sulfur vulcanization, adding sulfur, accelerators, antioxidants, and activators. Those additives are what stop biodegradation. They’re also what leak toxic chemicals into the environment when a balloon ends up in the sea, on a beach, or in a bird’s stomach.
Juliana Cumming, a 29-year-old Ph.D. student at Imperial College London, spent three years figuring out how to skip that step. “Our balloon is still made with natural latex, but we blend it with another biodegradable polymer and we don’t add any of these additives that are used in traditional balloons,” she says. The material that results is soft, elastic, and inflates as easily as a regular balloon. The benefit is that it doesn’t spend the next several centuries in a landfill or a seabird‘s gut.
Why the balloon problem is so hard to solve
Between 20 and 25 billion balloons are sold around the world each year. Most buyers have no idea what happens to them afterward, and some of the packaging hasn’t helped; it has long claimed balloons degrade “at the rate of an oak leaf.” The reality is that they don’t.
A 2019 study by the University of Tasmania found balloons were the “highest-risk plastic debris item” for seabirds, 32 times more deadly than ingesting hard plastics. Once a balloon lands in the ocean or on a shoreline, it looks like food to marine animals and birds. Unlike hard plastic, a deflated balloon is soft enough to get lodged in their digestive systems, which is often fatal.
Charlotte Melia ran a party planning business for over a decade before she thought much about where the balloons went. “We were putting out thousands of party balloons every single week,” she says, “and they were only there for a matter of hours simply to be popped and thrown in the trash.” When she looked closely at the biodegradable labeling on the packaging and realized it wasn’t holding up, she decided to fund something better. She and an associate put up around £30,000 (approximately $38,000) toward Cumming’s doctoral research at Imperial College.
Three years and a lot of failures
“There were hundreds of trials. We had many, many failures,” Cumming says. The formula she landed on uses natural latex blended with a second biodegradable polymer, with the vulcanization additives cut out. The team tested it in soil, seawater, and deionized water. It broke down in all three. Cumming estimates full breakdown within nine months.
The creators are aiming to bring it to market by 2028. Melia sees potential beyond the party aisle too: the same material could be adapted for household gloves, surgical gloves, latex clothing, and condoms.
For now, the most pressing use case is the one that started this: the balloon. Billions of them are sold each year, and many brands have packaging suggesting they’re environmentally harmless. Cumming’s formula would make that claim accurate for the first time.
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