Colorfully decorated floats, masked riders throwing cups from floats, and hundreds of costumed people standing in the streets- these are just a few aspects used to describe Carnival in New Orleans. Since the 1960s, Carnival (also known as Mardi Gras or, more broadly, “the Mardi Gras season”) has been celebrated in and around New Orleans, with big parades such as Endymion, Orpheus and Bacchus dominating the season. Travelers and party goers from all over come to New Orleans in the spring in order to experience the parades and, of course, catch as many beads as they can carry.
Mardi Gras means Fat Tuesday in French, and has been reportedly celebrated in the Louisiana area since the 1840s or earlier. According to legend, the floats and traditions of Mardi Gras were inspired by the French and medieval European celebrations that were brought overseas by immigrants. The first Carnival throws used in the US included sugared almonds, gold painted walnuts, and coconuts, but in the early years of Carnival they were not limited to more unpleasant things such as dirt, flour and quicklime. In the late 1800s to mid 1900s, one of the most prized and often used Carnival throws were glass beads imported from Czechoslovakia. But due to safety concerns, production costs and other political factors, glass beads slowly died out and were replaced by plastic ones.
The advent of the plastic bead was a sudden, but very popular one. The main exporter of beads to the US quickly changed from Czechoslovakia to southern China, where the plastic could be produced cheaply and efficiently shipped to the United States in time for Carnival. The beads now thrown from floats are made mostly from polystyrene, which when extruded (as Mardi Gras beads are) contain hydro-chlorofluorocarbons. Also known as HCFCs, these are potentially toxic carbons that have been shown in some studies to cause cancer and other life threatening diseases. The workers who make Carnival beads are also subject to handling dangerous HCFCs, and many of them are at risk of disease and respiratory illness from working with polystyrene all day. If it is allowed to degrade and seep into the earth, HCFCs can kill off many plants and infect groundwater. When found in the ocean, polystyrene and HCFCs can poison the fish and the abundance of ecosystems within it.
After Carnival and Mardi Gras day, many beads that were not caught or were broken are left lying in the streets, as well as many plastic bags and other assorted trash items. They are then collected and thrown away. The beads are very harmful in the way that there is almost no safe way to get rid of them; if you incinerate the beads, they excrete toxic chemicals that send pollution into the air. Polystyrene beads are not easily recycled in the United States, though they are in some European countries. As modern landfills do not allow most plastic waste to be degraded and the beads are resistant to photolysis, they can sit in the dumps for hundreds of years, leaching chemicals and harmful dyes. There are a few ways to safely degrade plastic and polystyrene, such as properly heated incineration techniques, but they are rarely used in the United States.
Should Carnival parades consider going back to throwing primarily glass beads instead of plastic ones? The answer could be both yes and no. Yes, because of the negative environmental impacts of plastic beads in landfills and waste sites, not to mention the wasted labor of factory workers to produce strings of beads that are bought, thrown, and then dumped. Another answer could be no, because glass beads are much more expensive than plastic ones so they would be thrown less often than is usually expected in parades, causing public indignation and perhaps be less of an “economic boost” for the South and for China. A combination of both glass and plastic beads, perhaps, and some new producing/recycling techniques could be the key. Whatever is decided for the future of Mardi Gras and Carnival in New Orleans, no one can disagree that it is a unique traditional celebration and there is nothing quite like it anywhere else.
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