Biodegradable beads for sustainable carnival celebrations

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Category: (Self-Study) Science/Environment

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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 and video were provided by The Associated Press.

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[Mardi Gras parade]

[Beads on the ground]

Greg Rhoades (interview): “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.”

[Greg Rhoades walking through Mardi Gras World]

Greg Rhoades (interview): “You know, 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.”

[Rhoades showing “PlantMe Beads”]

Alexis Strain (interview): “So this is made of something called PLA or polylactic acid, which is essentially a starch derivative that can be found from corn. And this is biodegradable, especially compared to the traditional petroleum plastic beads.”

[Biodegradable “PlantMe Beads”]

Alexis Strain (interview): “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.”

[3-D printer]

Alexis Strain (interview): “But inside this version of the Mardi Gras beads, there are seeds. So, that’s the reason that they’re hollow here is because we put seeds inside of them. We tried a bunch of different types. We tried okra, sunflower. And the main reason that we put the seeds in is to help speed up the biodegradation of the Mardi Gras beads. So because these beads are made from starch, certain bacteria that plant roots will attract will help break down this material and speed up the degradation.”

[Okra plant]

Alexis Strain (interview): “That definitely is the main goal of this, is to increase sustainability, but to also increase awareness of the current issues with Mardi Gras and the issues that it poses towards things like the drainage system and just general waste that it generates.”

[Crowds celebrating Mardi Gras]

[Mardi Gras beads in a tree]

Greg Rhoades (interview): “I would love to totally eliminate wasteful plastic, but some of those items are useful and functional and have purpose, and they are inexpensive to make and throw and buy. So, to a degree, you have to maintain that, but I think we’re just going to continue to see more cognizant individuals, more representation that this environment does matter, that we don’t want to clog our, you know, storm drains with all this stuff.”

[Still of people walking past debris on Bourbon Street in the early morning of Ash Wednesday, the day after Mardi Gras]

[Still of Joe Luscy, an employee with IV Waste, the company tasked with cleaning up the French Quarter after Mardi Gras, coordinating logistics]

[Still of a pile of trash awaiting cleanup in the French Quarter in New Orleans]

This script was provided by The Associated Press.

The related lesson for this video will be published next Wednesday.