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Let’s all do our part to be more sustainable during carnival season!
We’re repurposing off-cuts from old rider tunics to make artist designed throws putting the focus on making sure things are saved because they’re special, not tossed after a parade. Together, we can make an impact in creating a more eco-friendly Mardi Gras. This project is made possible by a Louisiana Division of the Arts/Louisiana Project Grant administered by Arts New Orleans . If you catch any handmade throws, please use #throwmesomethinghandmade when you share them online.
2023’s Artists and Designers:
Debra Masika
2023’s Collaborators and Sewists:
2023’s Krewe Partners/Parades:
Chewbacchus subkrewe Brainiacs
Krewe Boheme subkrewe Krewe of King James: The Super Bad Sex Machine Strollers (founded by DJ Soul Sister)
More announced soon!
Other Inspiring New Orleans organizations and business doing their part:
Take the pledge: I want to participate in a sustainable Mardi Gras in 2024
ricRACK plays a major part in growing the next generation’s artistry, independence, and environmental consciousness – stitch by stitch. Before ricRACK, no organization in New Orleans was focused on waste reduction and skill building with textiles and we’re excited to extend that mission into helping create a more sustainable Mardi Gras.
In 2022, your support helped divert more than 30,000 pounds of textiles from the landfill.
By pledging to a sustainable Mardi Gras in 2024, we could collectively divert 30,000 pounds of textiles and other repurposed items from the landfills during Carnival Season alone.
We believe creating a more sustainable Carnival Season is an attainable goal - if we continue to work together to achieve it. New Orleans is a city full of creative thinkers and artists that know how to work with what they’ve got, and each year more and more people are making Carnival more environmentally friendly and interesting with throws made by hand, repurposed from items that would have ended up tossed out onto the streets and into landfills.
Every year 25 million pounds of toxic beads are tossed from floats. In 2017 crews working under a $7 million emergency contract pulled 93,000 pounds of Mardi Gras beads - more than 46 tons - from clogged catch basins on St. Charles between Poydras Street and Harmony Circle.
Plastic beads haven’t always been a part of Mardi Gras. Your child is only going to love one or two of the throws caught in that overflowing wagon. The thrill of Carnival involves so much more than catching things you have no intention of keeping. Let’s bring it back to fewer, more special items that are caught in shared community, enjoying the revelry of the season together while thinking ahead about a more sustainable future.
Let’s Work Together
Get in touch.