The beads were flying all around them, some pooling
in the street, some caught by revelers and cherished for a moment --
most of them destined, in all likelihood, for the landfill.
It was Mardi Gras 2011, and Kirk and Holly Groh were stationed in
their family's traditional viewing spot in downtown New Orleans, where they had
watched so many parades roll by in years past.
This time, they kept thinking what a waste it was.
Their hometown had never seemed more environmentally fragile.
Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters had claimed their house in August
2005. Five years later, they watched their local fishmongers worry
their way through the BP oil spill.
But then the undersea gusher was finally capped, and a few months
later New Orleans was once again inundated with millions of pounds
of Chinese-made, petroleum-based plastic beads -- the iconic spoils
of Mardi Gras.
"Nothing had changed," Holly said. "We were astonished, and just
kind of dumbfounded."
The Grohs have since flung themselves into one of the nation's
more esoteric -- and, some would argue, futile -- environmental
crusades: Bringing a little conservationist restraint to the city's
pre-Lenten orgy of excess, which is Tuesday.
The movement, for now, is modest, and its concerns are myriad,
but most of the effort has focused on the estimated 25 million
pounds of plastic beads that make their way to the city every year.
The beads, of course, are central to the ritualized gift
exchanges unique to Mardi Gras season, a multi-day series of parties
and parades that brings an estimated million revelers to the streets
for what is sometimes called "the Greatest Free Show on Earth."
Members of Mardi Gras "krewes," the private social organizations
that stage the parades, spend thousands to purchase the shiny
baubles by the gross at local Carnival-themed superstores, then
fling them to crowds who beg for them with the exclamation, "Throw
me something, mister!"
In the touristy French Quarter, boozy packs of males stagger with
beads stockpiled on their necks in the manner of Mr. T, infamously
offering to bestow their gaudier strands on women who agree to flash
their bare breasts.
But after the exchange is made, the beads' value plummets. The
parade-goers -- among them the sobered-up tourists returning to, say,
Wichita -- are left, in the end, with strands of junk.
Traditional recycling centers cannot process the beads. However,
a few nonprofits in recent years have refined programs that collect,
bundle and resell them. And this year, an unprecedented crop of
initiatives has sprung up to help feed the recycled bead market,
with most of the ideas as idiosyncratic as the city itself.
The Arc of Greater New Orleans, a nonprofit that employs its
mentally challenged clients in a bead-recycling program, introduced
a trailer this season that will bring up the rear at some parades,
encouraging revelers to throw back the trinkets they just caught
with a slogan well-known to south Louisiana fishermen: "Catch and
release."
In October, a local environmental group called LifeCity held a
contest it dubbed "Green the Gras." The winning entrant proposed
(but has not yet implemented) a system that would encourage the
exchange of beads for tokens from businesses. The tokens could be
used for a luxury most coveted on Mardi Gras day: the use of a clean
