So lusted after in the moment, Mardi Gras beads have a cruel afterlife. The lucky ones find a useful purpose long after the parades stop: decorating a fence, maybe, or as an eye-catching art project.

“Some of my favorite things are the beads trees that you see and the people who have them all along their fence posts,” Geddis, a Mandeville resident, said. “I mean, it’s Mardi Gras and it ...

It seemed as if the bead workers were treated as mules, with the forces of the market their masters. A family catches Mardi Gras beads during the Krewe of Thoth parade down St. Charles Avenue in 2000.

Mardi Gras can make a lot of trash, adding up to millions of pounds each year. Now, some parades in New Orleans are cutting down on their environmental footprint by banning plastic beads.

Once called "Boeuf Gras," meaning, "fatted calf," the Mardi Gras season was a time of indulgence for foods, sweets, and alcohol as people to prepared to abstain for the Lent season.

City workers in Mobile, Ala. shovel pounds of Mardi Gras beads into the back of a truck. This story was originally published by Inside Climate News. MOBILE, Ala. — The trees tell the tale. In ...

The beads around Thomas's neck were part of the Mardi Gras' fun and still are but now mother and son, both scientists, have researched how those beads can have risks. Ruth Carmichael By ...

As the good times roll at Mardi Gras, float by float, the throws filter through the crowd to the roads and sidewalks below—beads, trinkets, and Moon Pies—covering the ground in a layer of ...

They removed more than 3,000 tons of debris—including 46 tons of leftover Mardi Gras beads collected on just five blocks of St. Charles Avenue, the main parade route. You May Also Like.

From time to time, people leave festive strings of beads on the grave of Judy Rayford, the man who established Joe Cain Day in 1967 as part of Mobile’s Mardi Gras celebrations.

Mardi Grad beads in New Orleans are creating an environmental disaster Despite a daily cleanup that leaves the post-parade landscape remarkably clean, uncaught beads dangle from tree limbs like ...

Cheap plastic beads often end up in landfills and can clog up the city’s 100-year-old drainage system. That’s led to more calls to ditch them altogether.