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Mardi Gras, complete with its wild parties, outrageous parade floats, and boisterous band processions, kicks off today in New Orleans. Fat Tuesday marks the biggest day of the festivities for tourists and locals alike—but it also creates lasting environmental problems for the local area.
In 2017, 93,000 pounds (46 tons) of Mardi Gras beads were pulled from city storm drains according to Reuters, a number which doesn’t account for the beads going straight to the landfill. And that’s just in New Orleans. While Mardi Gras beads signify celebration, they’re also posing an unnecessary threat to the environment.
Luckily, Baton Rouge-based Plant Cell Biologist and Louisiana State University Professor Naohiro Kato plans to change that. Kato has developed a process to turn microscopic algae into those beloved strands of beads which, after one to two years, will biodegrade into soil.
“I have family and friends who live in New Orleans and have been seeking to make the Mardi Gras celebration environmentally friendly,” Kato explained. “When I was invited to their Mardi Gras parade party, I met with a bunch of people who were concerned about the negative impact of Mardi Gras beads on the environment.”
Kato made his discovery by chance. “My student was supposed to come into the lab three nights in a row to move our test tube samples of algae from the centrifuge to the freezer, but one night he forgot,” he said. When Kato looked at the bottom of the centrifuge he found a mass of algae accumulating oils, which is one of the key ingredients in bioplastic production.
After growing and harvesting the microalgae, the team adds a chemical to “stick tighter oils and other materials within the algal cells.” They then need to be heated, molded into beads and dried before distributing them.
Unfortunately, you won’t be finding these biodegradable beads this year at Mardi Gras since it will still take time for commercial producers to have the means to make them. “Also, the production cost is still high which is a challenge,” Kato admits. His plan, though, is to offset costs by producing the microalgae for nutraceutical companies for profit and use the leftover for cost-effective yet eco-friendly beads.
What about this year, though—how can you celebrate Mardi Gras in a more environmentally-friendly way right now? One suggestion Kato gave was to recycle Mardi Gras beads. Nonprofit organization ArcGNO has recycling bins throughout the city where you can drop them off, and this in turn helps create jobs for individuals in the community who have autism or Down Syndrome. For any beads you’ve collected that you’re about to put into the garbage, you can seek out one of their many donation bins instead.
Kato also believes attitudes about Mardi Gras beads could be different if they were made from more precious materials, such as glass, so that people would want to keep them rather than toss them. He added, “We can re-think the purpose of beads at Mardi Gras completely. Do we need to through such a large amount of beads?”
This kind of movement has already taken hold of Lafayette, Louisiana, a city two and a half hours west of New Orleans. Krewe de Canailles, the city’s newest walking parade, requires all participants’ floats to be man-powered and all throws to be eco-friendly. They want participants to throw items which will be treasured rather than tossed.
Throwing and receiving beads feels like an intrinsic part of the Mardi Gras experience, but the trash doesn’t have to be—and if we want to celebrate for many more Fat Tuesdays to come, it can’t be. Luckily, by taking a more eco-friendly approach and exploring biodegradable materials, we could soon eliminate the environmental impact from the most popular Mardi Gras celebration in the United States.
