Column: Trash Audit is the First Step to a More Sustainable Mardi Gras

The following is a guest column on NOLA.com written by Caroline Vanchiere and our own Maryann Miller (StayLocal). Also be sure to read this fantastic letter to the editor by Alvin and Angela Su.

New Orleans leaders are doing heavy lifting in the name of fixing our budget woes. The Louisiana legislative auditor’s August 2026 report is encouraging, suggesting that tighter bookkeeping for residential trash pickup and recycling services could lead to savings for the city.

As leaders of environmental sustainability organizations who advocate for reducing landfill waste, we’re heartened to see this progress.

However, there is more opportunity at hand. The recent move by the City Council to moderately increase the fees Carnival krewes contribute to the city’s hosting costs of planning, safety and waste pickup should result in a more calculated approach to understanding the persistent and growing $4 million Mardi Gras deficit, specifically what is costing $1.5 million to haul to the landfill.

Now is a critical time to dig deeper and look at the opportunity cost of commingling recyclables with trash. When we send parade trash to the landfill jumbled together with materials that have value — such as aluminum, glass and re-tossable throws — we’re throwing money away.

Based on the way that Mardi Gras waste is managed today, the city doesn’t know exactly what the waste is or who is responsible for it, only that it all ends up in the landfill (except about 60,000 pounds annually that is diverted by the RecycleDAT Coalition). In 2026 alone, the city collected 2.7 million pounds of waste off the streets at Mardi Gras, yet we have no concrete data about what comprises this waste and, therefore, no clear path to effectively address it.

The ideal solution would be to conduct the city’s first Mardi Gras waste audit — a professional examination of what materials compose our Mardi Gras street trash before it is hauled to landfills.

This practice stems from the idea of producer responsibility — obligating producers to plan for their product’s end of life when it becomes waste. The premise is simple: If your activity is the cause of the waste, you are expected to plan for appropriately addressing it — rather than cast it off on New Orleans taxpayers.

Made diligently using best practices, a waste audit would be a one-time cost of $20,000 to $30,000 and could identify ways to minimize the current $1.5 million expense of Mardi Gras waste, such as improved recycling access, selling salvageable materials for scrap value and incentives for decreasing waste or using sustainable materials. The overall value of this effort is largely dependent upon what actions we as a community take in order to prioritize reducing waste on parade routes.

However, the impact to the city could be significant. If only 5% of waste generated at Mardi Gras is aluminum, for instance, that material could be generating roughly $65,000 in revenue to offset costs or support other programming within the city. Instead, the city pays to send aluminum to the landfill.

A waste audit would be a foundation to help the city make the best, most informed financial decisions about why Mardi Gras waste costs so much and how New Orleans can equitably share those costs with waste producers.