I was born and raised in Louisiana, and I’ve celebrated Mardi Gras my entire life. Despite it all, Mardi Gras is my favorite holiday, and my go-to suggestion for must-see events in Louisiana is Mardi Gras.

I have a lot of pride in this holiday, and the carnival season makes me proud to be from here. Mardi Gras is a unique experience that can only truly be enjoyed in New Orleans.

Despite my affection for Fat Tuesday, a few aspects of it actively harm the environment and cause a negative impact on the cities in which the parades occur.

One of the main throws in most parades is multi-colored plastic bead necklaces, cheaply made and bought off of AliExpress or Amazon.

Most of the time, these beads are caught and kept, stored in our attics of eternal darkness until we find them again years later and reminisce. But sometimes, the beads will either break on impact, get stuck or miss their target entirely, ending up in trees, power lines and even storm gutters.

Mardi Gras beads, as plastic waste, are bad enough for the local ecosystems, including the Mississippi River, but these cheap beads may contain high levels of lead and cadmium. This is very dangerous because those beads will end up in the Mississippi River, which means that New Orleans’ only potable water source will be filled with pollution.

I’m not trying to make the case that we shouldn’t celebrate Mardi Gras; however, I think we should use beads and other throws that don’t contain dangerous heavy metal pollutants. We should be working towards having a more sustainable Mardi Gras; that way, we can continue to celebrate this holiday in the future.

The environmental impact hasn’t gone unnoticed, and LSU researchers are developing a biodegradable Mardi Gras bead to be used in the 2026 season. While these beads cost $5 to produce, meaning they won’t be mainstream for a while, it’s good to know that alternatives are available, and as the technology and research get better, hopefully, the price will go down too.

However, the biodegradable beads won’t solve the problem until they become more mainstream, so one way to clean up the city is for Krewes to come out after all the parades are done and remove all the beads hanging or scattered across the streets.

While New Orleans and Baton Rouge use street sweepers to clean up the streets themselves, oftentimes, these machines don’t clean everything. One look at Downtown Baton Rouge on Spanish Town weekend just shows the debris and lack of attention by the city to enforce cleaning up our city.

I believe that Mardi Gras Krewes should return the day after the final parade has passed to assist in a cleaning effort in the cities where they occur. This would apply to any city, from New Roads to Baton Rouge to New Orleans.

While some organizations, such as Keep Louisiana Beautiful, have already attempted to clean the state, it would be great if it were a universal tradition that could be started and passed on to future Mardi Gras goers. This way, we can enjoy the carnival season without worrying about the negative ecological impacts.

Andrew Sarhan is a mass communication freshman from Baton Rouge, La.