What Happens to Mardi Gras Beads?

Festive beads are key to New Orleans' Mardi Gras celebration, but they're also causing a major headache to the city's sanitation department. Learn why in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey there,
brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum here. Visiting New Orleans during Marty
Gras is certainly on my list. The food is amazing,
and by all accounts, the costumes are dazzling, the energy exciting,
and the music phenomenal. And of course there are those colorful,
exactly gaudy enough beads, tons and tons of beads. People

(00:25):
throw them a passers by and tossed them from the
elaborate parade floats to be worn and treasured as souvenirs.
The beads are as much a hallmark of Marty Gras
as the Kingcake, also known as throws. They've been around
since the nineteen twenties. That's wheen a few of the
crews the groups that planned the celebrations parades started handing
glass beads out to parade goers lining the streets. But
these festive beads have caused quite a severe headache for

(00:47):
the city's public works department. Since September, workers have been
painstakingly cleaning tons of discarded Marty Gras beads from the
city's catch basins. In fact, they've sucked out some than
pounds that's forty six tons or forty two metric tons
along just a five blocks stretch of the popular downtown
parade route on St. Charles Avenue. Private contractors working under

(01:10):
a seven million dollar grant have collected nearly seven point
two million pounds that's three thousand, two hundred and sixty
five metric tons of debris from fifteen thousand of the
city's sixty eight thousand catch basins. The money is part
of a twenty two million dollar emergency project by the
city's Department of Public Works designed not only to clean
but also fixed the city's damaged basins. Nearly twenty four

(01:33):
vacuum trucks started cleaning them after widespread flooding last summer.
Marty Gras will be in full swing in the weeks
leading up to Fat Tuesday, which falls on February eighteen,
and the city is hoping residents and visitors will help
prevent beads and other debris from clogging the drains. To
that end, the city has been teaching people how to
clean the catch basins in their own neighborhoods, and city

(01:54):
workers are also considering covering the basins with so called
gutter buddies. At least until Marty Grazo. For these are
filters that look a bit like pool noodles and are
made with synthetic fibers woven to allow water to flow
straight through, but to catch sediment and debris. And since
they're washable and reasonable, they might be a wise investment
for future years. So, as they say in New Orleans,

(02:15):
laze le bon or let the good times roll. Just
don't let those Marti grab aids roll down the city's drains.
Today's episode was written by John Partano and produced by
Tristan McNeil. For more on this and lots of other
festive topics, visit our home planet, how stuff works dot
com