Charlotte Melia

Charlotte Melia built her first business around celebrations.

Starting with less than £50, she grew what became D&F Creative from children’s parties into a multi-million-pound international events studio. Today it creates live experiences for brands including Meta, Spotify, McDonald’s and Greggs.

Along the way, Melia bought a lot of balloons.

Thousands were being used for events and discarded hours later. The packaging reassured her that natural latex balloons would biodegrade at roughly the rate of an oak leaf. But after years of handling the product, she stopped believing the claim. She found research showing that conventional balloons could persist in the environment and took the problem to Imperial College London.

Instead of simply finding a different supplier, she helped fund the science.

Melia and D&F co-founder Christie-Lee Molgaard contributed around £30,000 towards PhD research by Juliana Cumming in Professor Jason Hallett’s Chemical Engineering group at Imperial. Over three years, the research tackled the problem at the level of the material itself: conventional natural latex is strengthened using sulphur vulcanisation and other additives that inhibit its ability to biodegrade.

The result became Bioloon.

Founded in 2026 by Melia, Molgaard, Cumming and Hallett, the company has developed a new latex formulation that avoids conventional vulcanisation additives while retaining the performance required of a balloon. Tests in soil, seawater and deionised water found that the material degraded in all three, with the team estimating biodegradation in around nine months.

Balloons are the starting point. Imperial estimates that between 20 and 25 billion are bought globally each year, giving Bioloon a huge first market. But the same material approach could ultimately extend into other latex products, from household and surgical gloves to clothing and condoms.

Melia spent years designing what happens during a celebration.

Then she started asking what was left behind when it ended.