N.O. couple founds first Mardi Gras–bead recycling program

Kirk and Holly Groh were stationed in their family’s traditional Mardi Gras viewing spot in downtown New Orleans last year when they got the inspiration for Verdi Gras, a first-of-its-kind Mardi Gras–bead recycling program that has the blessing of the city government. As The Los Angeles Times reports, the couple saw all the beads flying around them as a huge waste and an environmental disaster. It had been less than a year after an undersea gusher of oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster had finally been capped, and New Orleans was once again inundated with millions of pounds of Chinese-made, petroleum-based plastic beads. “Nothing had changed,” Holly Groh tells the newspaper. “We were astonished, and just kind of dumbfounded.” The Grohs officially founded Verdi Gras on Saturday, Feb. 11, setting out bead collection bins along the route for the Krewe of Pontchartrain parade. The Verdi Gras movement, for now, is modest, and its concerns are myriad, but most of the effort has focused on the estimated 25 million pounds of plastic beads that make their way to New Orleans every year. Check out the full feature story here, and the Verdi Gras website here.