After floats shower beads onto the screaming crowds and the excitement of Carnival season is over, the beads, old sofas, lawn chairs and empty cans litter the streets and parade routes. But the tons of trash don’t pile up for long — about 10 to 12 street sweepers roll through the New Orleans streets every night to clean up after the parades end for the day, said Veronica White, New Orleans Public Works Director.”We really don’t sleep much,” White said. “We work around the clock.” The City of New Orleans Department of Sanitation was originally responsible for cleaning up the streets after the parades were finished, White said. But after Hurricane Katrina, the city no longer had the man power to clean up.The Sanitation Department has about 24 employees, but about 200 to 300 workers are needed each night to sweep, rake and collect the trash left behind. White said her staff has 24-hour shifts during the week leading up to Mardi Gras and the day of the festival. The process can take anywhere between 12 and 24 hours to clean up after the second week of parades, she said. Key agencies involved in the massive pick up include J & E Enterprise, SDT Waste and Disposal, New Orleans Recreation Department and the Sheriff’s department, White said. During the parades, four teams of workers tag along behind the floats, she said. The first group of workers is located at the beginning of the parade route and begins to sweep and rake up the trash immediately after the parade passes the area, White said.Two more teams wait at the mid sections of the parade, and another team waits at the ending located on Canal Street in the French Quarter, White said.The task of cleaning up after a parade includes six front-end loaders, four street flushers, 16 dump trucks, eight to 10 garbage trucks and six to 10 pressure washers, White said.About $1.5 to $2 million is spent cleaning up during an entire Mardi Gras season in New Orleans, she said.While Baton Rouge parades are on a much smaller scale compared to the New Orleans festivities, the city still has its share of trash to clean up.Chris Livous, Baton Rouge Public Works maintenance supervisor, said Public Works employees clean about two to three tons of trash after each parade. The largest Baton Rouge parade is Spanish Town, which usually leaves about 4 tons of debris littered throughout the downtown route, Livous said.”It looks like a hurricane has hit an area in Baton Rouge,” he said. In New Orleans, workers place more than 1,000 55-gallon trash barrels along the New Orleans parade routes, White said. Before a Baton Rouge parade begins, workers place between 150 and 300 trash cans along the route. Workers then monitor the cans during the parades, Livous said.Sometimes the cans help minimize trash, but often parade-goers use the cans for a stand, he said. “People should be a little more considerate,” Livous said. “What bugs me is when a trash container is right beside you, and you just throw it on the ground.” At Baton Rouge parades, the beads pile up high enough to burn the sweeper’s engines, Livous said. “We have to go with a knife and cut those beads off the brushes, so it can continue to operate,” he said. Last year after the Spanish Town parade, the beads were piled high enough to block vehicles from passing in the street, Livous said. The workers run about 15 loads of trash in dump trucks to the landfills, he said. Encouraging participants to recycle can decrease the volume of trash being collected, said Margaret Reams, environmental studies professor. Organizations like Keep Louisiana Beautiful are participating in recycle programs after the parades, Reams said. One of the programs includes donating beads for schools to use, she said. The amount of trash parade-goers leave behind puts a burden on the city, which pays for the majority of the clean up, Reams said. In Baton Rouge, between 20 and 25 employees work overtime after the parades, and the labor cost equals about $5,400. Each parade costs more than $6,600, Livous said. After a parade, the scene can be described as treeless — just beads hanging in the air, Livous said.”The party is over, so they leave everything there,” he said. ——Contact Joy Lukachick at [email protected]