That ribbons & balloons along public streets for a funeral is litter rather than a tribute?

[StreetLitter]

I frequently see balloons and plastic ribbons tied on lampposts for funerals near me. It doesn’t appear to be removed after the funeral, so just becomes litter. MORE litter, our city is filthy anyway (Birmingham).

Someone mentioned this on a community group and got torn to shreds. I agreed with them but would not want to have done so on the group given the vitriol dished out.

So AIBU?

YANBU- It is litter and should not be allowed
YABU - It brings comfort to grieving families

YANBU.
If families want to put up posters-ok... but take the flipping things down afterwards! I loathe the entitled attitude which makes some think their 'memorial' is sacrosanct.
And don't get me started on balloon releases.. it's just floating chav litter. And so bad for wildlife, livestock and the environment. Grrrrr!
I don't care if it is unpopular .. ban it (balloon releases) or bin it (plastic ribbons, and associated tat) after the funeral. Simple.

YANBU. It looks awful.

It's not grief intruding into our lives; it's performative.

Chipping in to say the real problem is when wildlife and livestock either injure themselves by getting tangled up in or eating the litter. This applies to all litter. I don't think a living creature should suffer because of someones grief (or someone being lazy not finding a bin for normal litter).

I think I know exactly what/where you’re referring to OP… I also saw the comments about it on Nextdoor

The balloons and ribbons have been there since at least last Thursday, and whilst I understand that it’s a well-intentioned tribute, they are already looking very tatty. It’s also the sheer scale of it… they stretch for over a mile.

i genuinely have sympathy for families in this awful situation, but really there should be some consideration (maybe from friends of the family) to take them down so that the tribute doesn’t become litter

I absolutely hate balloons. People are so selfish they do not care what they do to wildlife. Seems to me that grieving gives you a free pass to be completely selfish and thoughtless. My best friend died last week. Will I honour her with balloons to ruin the environment. No I bluddy won't.

It is litter and its messy. It's annoying people don't clean up after themselves.

Ribbons,balloons and decaying flowers in plastic packaging left on trees and lamp posts, parks don't serve any purpose. (Nor do they serve as a 'slow down' notice where the fatality has been due to speeding)

I unfortunately had a family member who died after hitting a tree in a car.

One of the things that gave me greatest comfort, at a very messy time when their death was plastered on the front page of the local rag, was that in the aftermath there was a vigil at the tree, of people and candles and tributes.

I’ve voted YABU because to me personally I know what it meant. I would not want it to stay forever, in fact I actively avoid driving down that road nowadays so it would be pointless to do it at the crash site. But when I see other people’s tributes I know why they are important to them. It marks that someone lived. Someone is missing. And that other people stand with you in remembering them. They won’t be forgotten. It’s really a fundamental part of being human. We’ve done it since the dawn of time.

It may be ribbons and balloons and tat, but every one is someone thinking of how special that person was to them. And in the absence of the person there, to love, feeling other people’s love for them really helped me personally.

I had ‘vigils’ and balloon releases. It’s dangerous to wildlife and animals and I’m fed up of human selfishness and needing to make everything about them.
There are ways to remember your loved one that aren’t selfish.

A humans feelings should NEVER trump the welfare of other living things.

People sometimes hammer tacky memorials to trees in one of my local woods.

Sometimes the memorial litter takes the form of badly positioned nesting boxes that the birds are never going to use. Nesting boxes! In a forest, that is full of trees, which are quite well known for their provision of natural bird nesting opportunities.

Don't know if these are the same people that fling dog poo bags into low-lying branches, but here's a thought: Why not tie a memorial message to one of the poo bags and kill two birds with one stone?

Urgh I think these streets tributes are grim, sorry. Mawkish, performative and tatty. I understand people need to grieve but I don’t see why they have to do their grieving in a particularly polluted and horrible part of a dangerous A road.

Should probably not be stopped because its a free country but the person who starts them off should be responsible for clearing them.

It is selfish and it is performative. I'm sick of seeing plastic flowers and flowers in plastic tied to benches along the seafront near me. Yes I get that the dearly departed used to enjoy walking there too, but the benches (that have plaques with other dearly departed names on them) can't be sat upon because of these awful "tributes ". Don't get me started on b**y balloons. Why would anyone want to release something into the environment that is a sure killer of other species? How is that a lovely tribute to a loved one? All this stuff should be banned.

But a lot of memorialising involves ‘litter’ — even flowers on graves etc. I was in Newcastle recently and out by Tynemouth, every bench had bouquets of flowers tied to it. Roadside shrines often involve flowers, plastic wrapping, candles etc.

even flowers on graves etc

The thing about flowers on graves is that they are in a place that is specifically set aside for memorialising. That's what I don't get -- why is it that people feel they can elect to ignore the special places provided in churchyards and cemeteries and just put their stuff wherever they like?

Even though we need to show special consideration for bereaved people, we also need to recognise that literally everyone is a bereaved person in the making. Since we will all have deceased loved ones to mourn at some point, it is perfectly reasonable to think "What if everyone did that?" when objects are left around in this way.

But at least on a grave it is limited to one small space and will almost certainly be kept tidy either by the family or whoever takes care of the place. I don't think anyone has such a problem with that. But when it's in public spaces, tied to lamp posts or benches it's just litter.

It's right up there with my hatred of people who build crappy cairns everywhere to 'mark' they've been there. One person does it and then the next 3000 do it and it just becomes a huge eyesore. You're not special and nobody wants to see your stupid piled up stones on a 2000 year old tomb.

Performative Grief seems to have become a thing since Diana died.

Someone has an accident, and the people who witnessed it, heard it, live nearby, attended to the injured, have to be reminded of it by way of balloons, candles, ribbons, banners etc.

Maybe those people don’t want all of that outside their property. There was a near riot when a property owner tried to take down a banner etc that were attached to their property.. the police had to be involved.

The person most likely didn’t die at the scene anyway, died in an ambulance, or in the hospital .. so what are people actually marking ? Why the scene of a horrendous accident.

As for “vigils” that (round here) always seem to end up in chaos & fights - what happened to quietly remembering someone with a bit of Dignity? How did standing on the street, drinking, whilst releasing a balloon into the air, become a thing ?

“I’m sadder than you” “look how popular this person was” “I’m more filled with grief” .. tacky

Minks are going to mink.
As pp have said oh look how much more heartbroken I am compared to others.
And it's usually he was lovable rogue that translates to a pita within a community.

I don't have an issue with it personally, but I agree that a family friend should be nominated to go around and discretely remove it within a couple of days.

I hate anything like this, left in a public space. My worse experience is people who think the countryside would be improved with a few knitted items.

The 'love' padlocks on bridges really irritate me too. I kind of get the very first one, hidden unobtrusivvely right down there in the corner; but when you're having to shove thousands of them along the support wires of the creaking bridge to make room for you to add yet another one, what does it actually achieve?

Just like flinging yet another bunch of (not even unwrapped) flowers high atop the existing mound of them.

Also, flowers will before long rot into the ground and complete their nature cycle unobtrusively; whereas a bottle of Newky Brown that's left there in tribute to your old drinking buddy is a forgone dangerous hazard in the making.

I'd volunteer to tidy away the Newky Browns. 😉

Yes they are usually thinking about their loved one who has died rather than the plastic, bastards.

I'm with you - I cannot stand yarn bombing. There's one near me that does a theme during their annual town festival and it looks utterly shite.

Performative grief is a good way of expressing it. It’s the outcome of social media. The person who made the original post objecting apparently got threats of violence made. Nice way to remember the deceased. Humans are strange.