Where do balloons come from and what happens to them after a party?

Where do our balloons come from?

We use 3 brands, with one being our main, called Sempertex originating from Columbia. Things we love about Sempertex is their commitment to employing women, their efforts to operate with clean energy, and their commitment to promoting responsible forestry practices.

Latex for balloons is collected from the sap of rubber trees, which are able to live and thrive for years, contributing to maintaining forests in South America. They only grow in certain climates, making Columbia a prime location, but it also creates decent and respectable jobs for people in that area, which may otherwise be hard to find.

All of our brands test safe of harmful chemicals, and are safest for us to use, but also better to put in your home, and better for recycling efforts afterward.

Read more about Sempertex on their website: https://sempertex.com/en/pages/nature-first

Everything we design and sell, every service we provide, is with intention to reduce waste in the event industry.

We are not just selling you balloons here, everything we sell and services we provide are layered with sustainable practices. There are many event businesses out there offering “throw away” designs which may be profitable for them and easy for you in the moment, but we simply won’t do it. Not only do we recycle and repurpose balloons as much as possible before they are popped, but we are getting involved in a recycling program so our popped balloons get transformed into new products like dog toys (which our dogs love!). This will slightly increase our price because we actually have to pay to do this, but it’s worth doing!

It’s not only balloons that are creating a ton of trash after events either. Balloons are the least harmful and least impactful thing. It takes a lot of energy to grow flowers and many of those flowers are put in packaging and shipped from other countries on a regular basis, and we see huge, gorgeous flower arrangements (arranged in a block of foam set on a hard plastic plate) just thrown out after events. Please consider contacting flower recycling programs for post-event decor. There are non-profits who take wedding flowers, redesign and give them to retirement communities to enjoy. If the item can bring more joy before it ends up in a garbage bag, let’s make that happen!

Ways we operate to reduce waste

Rentals! Instead of buying all these items for your event, using it for 4 hours and tossing it, rent it from us! This goes for large backdrops, to small bud vases and table runners.
Frameless Drop Off Items:: If we are leaving balloons with you, it will not have any stands or framing inside. We learned they usually get thrown out (rarely ever are returned to us), and that is a TON of waste so we just stopped offering it. Anything we drop off will made of just balloons, and maybe organic material like fresh flowers.
Helium is used sparingly and only when necessary. Most of our work is done with just air, but when we do use helium, it's a 60/40 air mixture. The air actually helps the balloons keep their shape longer, and we only need just enough helium to make them float. We do NOT sell balloons for intentional release, and all helium balloons we send out will be securely attached to a weight. Please do not release balloons, it's giving them a very bad reputation and there are people actively trying to ban balloons enitrely.
Foil Balloons, like these nice shiny orbz, or the number balloons you get for a birthday can actually be refilled with air/helium and go to a second party! While we still have to have extras incase they pop, we use foils until they no longer hold air. THEN we use them to cover weights, our bases, or make new decor elements. Once fully used, the foil can actually be recycled too!
Balloons styled in this "Classic" or "Traditional" way are tough for us to repurpose. However, you will see us promoting these more now that we can truly put them in a balloon recycle bin, as we know they aren't just trashed after one event. They do need to be set on a frame, which is something will always return for. While there is such thing as a "disposable" arch frame - that just means it was cheap to make, but it is absolutely reusable. We will never sell you "disposable" framing or backdrops.
This little fact some people might frown upon, but... we prefer styling in the "free form" or "organic" style, with clusters of one color, which allows us to take apart a garland and reorganize it with different colors to create an entirely new look. For Halloween every year, I save balloons during October and use them for my Trick or Treat display. The arch in this photo contains balloons that were used at least 3 times before this! As long as they still look fresh, clean, and will perform, we keep them going.
The balloons in this garland looked amazing. You would never know they came from two other events the week before. Repurposing balloons is not about increasing our profit- it takes work. We have to carefully disassemble, re-bag them, and store them in room temperature, then redesign, and we spray them with a balloon shine product to give them a fresh shine. The intention here is to keep using something that is perfectly good rather than throwing it out to just recreate the same exact thing.
When it comes to flowers... while we love fresh, we believe there is also a place in events for faux. This is another item we have in storage bins and use over and over until it can't be saved anymore. We take care of our things, so our faux and even dried florals last for years. Large floral arches or adding flowers and foliage in balloons requires a TON of product - so especially for these purposes, we like faux! Faux flowers will always be done as a rental. If you would like to keep your arrangements, we'll use fresh, unless you really want the faux ones to keep reusing, we support that!
FRESH FLOWERS - We love them. We purchase as much as we can from a local co-op of flower farmers from our area. This takes less energy in packaging and transport, but also supports our local community! Then, as we process and cut stems - all of those trimmings go into compost behind our shop. When we take the flowers after an event, we MIGHT get a chance to add them to another event, or we give them to neighbors and people we know who will love them longer, and will return our containers. Our bud vases, risers, and even most larger vases we can and will use again if they are returned.

We don’t want to see balloons be banned, but we all need to participate using them responsibly. Help us do so by supporting our business as we invest in these efforts.

Yes, there are a lot of people trying to ban balloons completely. We will soon be a member of this organization standing up for safe environmental practices: https://www.coalitionforresponsiblecelebration.org/

Where do balloons come from and what happens to them after a party?

Where do our balloons come from?

Everything we design and sell, every service we provide, is with intention to reduce waste in the event industry.

Rentals! Instead of buying all these items for your event, using it for 4 hours and tossing it, rent it from us! This goes for large backdrops, to small bud vases and table runners.

We don’t want to see balloons be banned, but we all need to participate using them responsibly. Help us do so by supporting our business as we invest in these efforts.

We have moved back home based! While we would love to see you, we simply cannot have random visitors at our homes.

Our starting zip code is 08610.