[Image above] Mardi Gras generates millions of pounds of waste per year, but the implementation of green cleanup practices is helping address the aftermath of the week-long party. Credit: Katia Seniutina / Shutterstock
Mardi Gras in New Orleans, La., is one of those rare events that captures the energy and history of its host city. It is a destination event on the level of Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; the National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, D.C.; or the International Ice and Snow Festival in Harbin, China.
Yet as this famously excessive event continues to grow, its environmental impacts are becoming excessively harder to ignore. Fortunately, local organizations are stepping up to make the event more environmentally friendly, and their efforts have diverted thousands of pounds worth of materials away from landfills, including glass.
Why sustainability is top of mind in top tourism destinations
Unless you have been living under a rock, you have probably heard about overtourism, or the phenomenon of too many visitors flocking to the same destination and exceeding its physical, ecological, or social capacity. During the COVID-19 pandemic, travel demand built up with no way to satisfy the desire to roam, and once people were free to move around again, they did so in droves.
Cities from Rome to Paris and even New York City are recognizing the problems of congestion in their cores, with the world’s most popular tourism destinations (Orlando and Dubrovnik) experiencing more than 30 tourists per resident every year. But population centers are not alone in experiencing overtourism. The most fragile ecosystems in the world are under threat, including Antarctica, the Canary Islands, and the Jungfrau region in Switzerland.
Among the negative impacts from overtourism, many regions find that their waste-disposal systems are struggling the most under the massive influx of people. You may have seen stories about the quantity of trash on Mount Everest or possibly about landfills on Caribbean Islands.
The accumulation of waste in many popular tourist areas is mitigated somewhat by being spread out over the course of a year. However, for Mardi Gras in New Orleans, the population can almost quadruple for one week, placing a huge strain on the city’s systems. Additionally, Mardi Gras is fueled by alcohol consumption, which increases adverse climate impacts. Although glass beer bottles are recyclable, we know that much of the glass produced and consumed in the United States is not recycled.
To their credit, New Orleans has recognized that Mardi Gras has an outsized effect on their waste production and has taken some imaginative steps to reduce glass waste (along with the iconic plastic beads) in the last few years.
Coastal restoration: The glass-to-grass pipeline
Local bars are partnering with New Orleans–based recycler Glass Half Full in a Mardi Gras competition to see which bar can recycle the most glass bottles. Glass Half Full uses industrial pulverizers to grind glass into various grades of sand and gravel. These materials are then used for a variety of purposes, from coastal restoration to plant growth media and terrazzo flooring. A current project is using recycled glass sand to create an artificial island planted with trees at Bayou Bienvenue (a 12.1-mile-long bayou east of New Orleans). Another group is using up to 75 wt.% glass cullet to propagate marsh grasses.
These efforts are a classic example of making do with what you have. The glass that held the drinks for the party returns to the Earth as sand that protects the city and the wider Gulf coastline from the next hurricane. Coastal restoration is also on the front lines of defense against sea-level rise, a constant concern in New Orleans and across Louisiana.
Infrastructure protection: Saving the storm drains
Mardi Gras waste is not just a landfill problem; it is a civil engineering nightmare. New Orleans is one of only two coastal cities located primarily below sea level that are not in the Netherlands (where coastal engineering is practically an art form). The other subsea-level coastal city outside the Netherlands is Georgetown, Guyana. Baku, Azerbaijan is also below sea level, but it is hundreds of kilometers from the Black Sea and so not in danger from sea level rise.
The response to coastal flooding in New Orleans has two prongs. Their sophisticated (yet morally complicated) system of levees and pumps, and their storm drains. For decades, massive clumps of plastic beads and glass have clogged New Orleans’ catch basins, contributing to catastrophic street flooding.
Today, organizations such as Grounds Krewe and their RecycleDAT! initiative conduct a specialized sweep immediately after Mardi Gras parades. The intervention catches glass, plastic, and aluminum before the city’s heavy-duty street flushers push them into the catch basins.
Raise the bar: Commercial circularity
The alcohol-fueled revelry has led to a collaborative effort called Raise the Bar, in which Grounds Krewe, Climate Culture, Glass Half Full, and Every Can Counts are providing free recycling stations in various bars around the city. The goal is to move the burden of recycling glass, plastic, and aluminum from drunk tourists to the establishment.
Bars along the parade routes get dedicated sorting bins, which ensure that the heavy glass is removed from the general waste stream the moment the bottle is emptied. That glass is then crushed and used for wetland restoration, among other applications.
Beyond glass: The evolution of throws
Despite the canonical image of stacks of beaded necklaces on tourists’ necks, increasing numbers of parade floats are choosing sustainable alternatives that parade attendees are more likely to keep. Some of the choices are biodegradable, so even if they get thrown away, they will not persist in landfills for hundreds of years.
Die-hard plastic bead collectors can also find opportunities to recycle what they catch. The Arc of Greater New Orleans employs people with intellectual disabilities to sort and repackage tons of collected beads, turning a waste product into a sustainable revenue stream for the community.
Bending the arc in the Crescent City
Ultimately, the sustainability efforts defining Mardi Gras represent more than just a cleanup—they are a blueprint for urban material circularity. By treating empty glass bottles not as refuse, but as a critical technical resource, New Orleans is addressing its unique geographic vulnerability with homegrown innovation. For a city sitting precariously below sea level, the transformation of waste glass into sand for coastal protection is a vital engineering intervention.
As we look toward the future of global tourism, New Orleans proves that even the most excessive celebrations can evolve. By capturing the value of glass at the source, the city ensures that the revelry of today provides the literal (or should we say, “littoral”) foundation for its protection tomorrow.
