America’s Next Top Pool Float

“Animals are done.” Yep! With all this plastic on the planet, that is rapidly becoming true!

I'm glad to see so many comments about the plastic waste. This is only a recent change in public discourse; ten years ago nobody was worrying out-loud about plastics. Yet I remember, as a member of the US Navy from 2000-05, throwing plastics overboard while underway (that's what we were told to do...) and personally cringing and despairing about where all that trash was going, and hoping others felt the same. Sure enough, a couple years later public consciousness was raised about the Trash Gyres that exist in duplicate in each major ocean (North and South Pacific Gyre, etc). The first steps to making change on an aggregate scale is people talking about it, along with visceral reactions to wasteful trends such as this. Though children's delight is a priceless thing, we need to find sustainable ways of satisfying that need without mountains of deflated unicorns filling the landfill as well as not-so-bottomless-depths of the world's oceans.

There is also the safety issue: many float users do not know how to swim, and floats do float away and they can be punctured pretty easily.

Rubber truck tire inner tubes, available at your local auto parts store, may not seem to be Instagram-worthy... but they have often lasted me for years, and they are more comfortable to boot --

Every summer the Carolina Canoe Club has a pool toy regatta at Nantahalla Falls. Steerability is considered to be cheating, and carnage and failure are, well, sorta the point. (And, yes, pfd's and helmets required, and safety throw-ropes at the bottom).

There are cheap, canvas mats available, if you can't see your way to spending $200 for a real surf mat. The people in this article don't look like they are interested in durability, Put "canvas surf mat" into Google and Amazon, and there are some $25 models available.

So much waste for temporary happiness and promoting your personal "brand". Floating on water is fun, but does everything need to be made into a moment for Instagram? Plus they are visual pollution- lakes and rivers and oceans are beautiful, you don't need an obnoxious piece of plastic to make it more special. When I see the pool float pictures a few things cross my mind about your "brand"- 1. you don't mind creating waste, 2. you are not very original, 3. you probably annoyed other people trying to enjoy nature or the pool with your photo shoot.

and where does all the plastic go?

Haven't I read something somewhere recently about plastics in waterways and oceans? And wasn't that sort of considered a *bad* thing?

So much unnecessary plastic. That’s I can think when I see these photos. Kiddy pools and water wings seem more justified, but I’d still like to see more ecological versions.

Why all the hate for toys? I have a huuuge inflatable rubber-ducky float with handles. If you had heard the squeals and splashes of my neighbors' children at the pool this weekend, the curmudgeons among you might understand the value of having something colorful and exciting to play with in the water. Last year we all rode an inflatable shark (if we dared). And I'm 71.

Complaining about pool floats is a sure sign that you need.... To get on one. Relax and enjoy your life, it isn't recyclable either.

Plastic. This floaty Instagram trend should end today. Each one of these floaters will take hundreds of years to decompose. It's like 10,000 straws in the shape of a swan. NYT should be doing a story about that. This is not cute. It's offensive.

I was pleasantly surprised and encouraged to see the first 19 comments are almost unanimously about the fact that these are a huge polluting waste of plastic, as funny as they may be. I only wish the NYT writer would have recognized that was an inevitable counterpoint to the article, and included at least some discussion of the issue. Instead we just have this article essentially standing in as an advertisement for the companies that market this junk, no doubt being shared all over media to grow the trend further.

I feel so unhip when I look at my trusty old inner tube...

Does anyone have a recommendation for an eco-friendly pool float? Thanks! I do not want one of these PVC pieces!

This would explain that thing, pegasus? a unicorn? my little pony? our neighbors have moored at their dock. Doesn't explain the neighbors but at least now we know they chase trends.

Learn to swim.

“It’s like a statement,” Ms. Cesario said. “The float that you bring defines you.” I think this was said without any irony, which is the most disturbing part. Reminds me of the scene in Fight Club where the main character is purchasing IKEA over the phone and talks about ‘which piece of furniture defined me as a person”.

Enough with the plastic already. Seriously. Enough.

Hopefully this isn't all going to end up floating in the Pacific in a year or two's time when they're out of fashion...

My husband keeps buying them for our teenage daughter. They’re cute in the moment. Then they pop. Then you claim you will fix it but you don’t. Then you put it in the basement as a rather large plastic monument to a carefree life, to big a investment to dispose of easily. No one wants it. It is last years pegasus. Then you repeat the cycle again next summer. I know I sound grumpy.

If y'all think plastic is bad, your car is exponentially worse for the environment than the global swimming float industry.

I'm not sure which is more upsetting to me, this article about more endless plastic trash for the landfills, or the other one recently about float planes taking people to the depths of the Adirondacks, no effort required. What next, and article about the wonderful world of drones?

I was wondering what happened to all the plastic straws.

cheap chinese plastics that will usually not last an entire summer...

These objects are offensive. They are a visual scourge; contribute to the blight on beautiful places; and are almost certainly landfill contributions once the "float" and Instagram stupidity is over. Try swimming.

These things are a scourge! In vacation spots like Hawaii, people buy them for the trip and leave them behind. Hotel employees can take home only so many floaties, is the abandoned pool toys languish forever in a landfill. I wish some company would bring back the canvas-covered surf mat of the 1960s. The mats were as stiff as boogie boards when inflated correctly, and the canvas was much nicer on the skin of a child (or adult). They were great for riding small waves safely. They lasted for years, and you could patch them. They were as comfortable as beds if you wanted to just lie stop the water and get sun cancer...um...I mean a tan.

All I see is more needless use of plastics.

Can we reflect on how environmentally wrong these giant mounds of plastic are?

More non-recyclable, short-life plastic to pollute our planet. What fun.

An incredibly thoughtless waste. For a couple of instas and maybe one or two seasons of use *at best* people are willing to create this kind of insidious pollution? There must be a less destructive ways to gratify one’s need for a few moments of fun.

Plastic! Just what we need more of...

There are few things more obnoxious than someone going to a public pool with a float the size of a small SUV and then parking it by the ladder.

Does the world not yet have enough plastic?

Yes these floats are cute and trendy on IG, but they are not “green” and with one “pin prick” can no longer stay inflated and become a giant plastic mess in a landfill. Think plastic grocery bags and balloons are bad for the environment? These are way worse. Tread lightly and rent or buy a kayak, canoe or sailboat that can be used over and over for years and years.

Our family did a week on Cape Cod for several summers in the mid-60s. We had huge inflatable green whale floaties. Of course, we were 9 and 12, not drinking and nobody even took so much as a snapshot. Did it even happen?