Biodegradable beads for sustainable carnival celebrations

The famous New Orleans Mardi Gras sees revelers come from far and wide to watch the lavish parades roll through the historic US city. In the narrow streets of the old French Quarter, raucous and continuous street parties take over. Traditionally, items like plastic beads are thrown from the parade floats to the watching crowds. Once made of glass and cherished by parade spectators who were lucky enough to catch them, today cheap plastic bead necklaces from overseas are tossed from floats by the handful. Spectators sometimes pile dozens around their necks, but many are trashed or left on the ground. But the beads are increasingly seen as a problem. Despite efforts to collect them for reuse, many are trashed or left on the ground. A few years ago, the city pulled 46 tons of them from its storm drains. This year, in an effort to be greener, three krewes are throwing biodegradable beads instead. “Sustainability is a big, important thing. I think the city of New Orleans used to actually gauge the success of Carnival based upon the tonnage of waste from the street, and that is a terrible gauge. We should actually be looking at the excitement on people's faces, or what the memories they've taken away. That's the success of a Carnival season, not the garbage that we produce,” says Greg Rhoades, co-founder of Krewe of Freret, one of the three krewes using sustainable beads. Rhoades hopes those receiving the beads will make use of them. “As you have thousands of riders going down the street throwing things to people, we wanted to limit our waste, ultimately. You know, this is something that people should take home, items they value. We wanted people to not discard these items, to value them, to put them on their altar,” he says. The sustainable beads—called “PlantMe Beads”—were developed at Louisiana State University and are 3-D printed from a starch-based material. “The process for this is now pretty simple. We have a file that we made that has the geometry of these beads. It takes around two hours to print one using a basic 3-D printer,” explains Alexis Strain from Louisiana State University. This article was provided by The Associated Press.