As a young child, I looked forward to going to the annual fetes organised by the firm he worked for. One of the biggest attractions for me was the balloon race, where children wrote their names and addresses on labels attached to helium balloons, with the finders of those balloons being requested to contact the company to say how far they'd gone. The balloon that travelled furthest would win a prize for the child whose name was on the label. (I never won but I was always thrilled at the idea that my name would be up in the sky and going who-knows-where).
One year we went though and I was disappointed to find that there was no balloon race that year. I was told that it had been cancelled as it had been realised that the balloons could be hazardous to wildlife. That was SIXTY YEARS AGO, so one might have hoped that people would have started to get the message by now!