Hi Lemmy,

I’m organising a funeral, and one of the ideas that has come up is for people to write memories on a balloon and let them go. However, I’ve also heard that they often end up in trees etc and are terrible for the environment.

Is there such a thing as environmentally safe balloons? Other suggestions are also welcome.

  • pan_troglodytes@programming.dev
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    5 months ago

    rent a wall and provide cans of spray paint for people to leave inspiring tags.

    then hire a company to clean the wall in a few days.

  • jarredpickles87@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Sorry for your loss

    Another thing that I’m not seeing people mention is helium balloons wandering to places like power substations and/or power lines, causing outages or even fires/explosions depending.

    I liked what someone else said about writing thoughts or stories and having them read anonymously.

  • ciapatri@sh.itjust.works
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    5 months ago

    There’s already a couple great suggestions offered here as alternatives to the harmful balloon idea. I just want to say thank you to OP for being thoughtful enough to ask the question in the first place. The world needs more people like you.

  • Otter@lemmy.ca
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    5 months ago

    The other comment touched on balloons so I had some other suggestions based on things that other cultures have done

    • Would lanterns be ok? They follow a similar principle, and they might be made of more biodegradable materials (paper lanterns). This isn’t something I’m familiar with though
    • There’s also the idea of setting something biodegradable ‘to sail’ on the water. Little paper boats with messages on them should be possible, and it would be easier to write something on them. You’d need a lake, and you’d need to check if the type of paper will dissolve, but it still feels better to me than balloons

    Sorry for your loss

    • Radical Dog@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Lanterns are a plague on farmers unfortunately. We’ve picked out quite a few from hedges over the years, it’s just littering with extra steps.