If your friend or neighbor told you Tuesday that “a bunch’a clowns came to the city council meeting last night,” he was not referring to rowdy audience members or political opposition—nearly a dozen balloon industry professionals, artists and entertainers drove in from across LA County to petition city council to rethink its proposed balloon ban.
In the end, council made a small concession, changing language to allow for biodegradable balloons—but what exactly is a biodegradable balloon will be up to staff’s research to determine.
Led by Treb Heining, a self-proclaimed “balloon man” whose dominance over the domestic balloon design market spans decades, 10 balloon professionals—none of whom were Malibu residents—presented council with an array of reasons to suspend the ban, which would have been enacted at the Monday, Oct. 22, meeting.
“Helium balloons are just a small part of what the balloon industry is all about,” Suzanne Haring, a local balloon artist, said. According to Haring, many balloons are not designed to float or fly in the air at all. Others added more arguments: Not only are many balloons not helium-based, but only foil (commonly known by the brand-name Mylar) balloons are known to interfere with power lines and spark fires. One claimed a Malibu ban would lead to driving with a car full of balloons over a canyon road—a dangerous driving condition. In addition, they said, latex balloons made in the United States are one hundred percent biodegradable—and the vast majority of balloons sold locally are made in the USA.
It was this last point that sparked the most debate; council members simply didn’t buy it.
“Latex balloons that are commonly used have dyes in them,” Council Member Skylar Peak said. “They also have plasticizers. They do not biodegrade, and that’s how your industry continues to befuddle the environmental world. All this information is online.”
This statement resulted in an uproar among balloon supporters.
Peak said the United States Department of Fish and Wildlife objects to balloon releases, adding, “I think that if you used a product that was natural, that actually was biodegradable … then we wouldn’t have this problem.”
He went on to say drug smugglers often put cocaine into latex balloons and swallow it to move it across borders: “I find it very hard to believe people who smuggle cocaine into this country would do so in a product that’s biodegradable in their stomach, where they could die.”
The item became a he-said, she-said, with Peak looking for information about balloons on his phone, while audience members questioned his sources. After an hour of discussion, the item was moved on to a future agenda.
In a 3-2 vote, council elected to bring back the language of its balloon ban “with an alteration to the balloon definition to carve out latex balloons, which are 100 percent biodegradable.”
