A coalition of nonprofit groups, city officials and industry partners diverted more than 61,000 pounds of recyclable material during the 2026 Carnival season in New Orleans collected along Mardi Gras parade routes.
The effort, organized under the RecycleDat! initiative, marked its fourth year of activity during the annual festival, which draws roughly 1 million visitors to the city each year and generates large volumes of debris and discarded parade items.
According to organizers, the program diverted 61,219 pounds of material during the 2026 Carnival season. The total included 6,142 pounds of aluminum as well as 1,691 pounds of plastic bottles, 34,741 pounds of glass containers and 18,646 pounds of Mardi Gras beads and parade throws.
Tim Ebner, vice president of communications and marketing at Can Manufacturers Institute, said the aluminum total represented the largest amount of used beverage cans the group has collected during Mardi Gras.
“That equates to about 197,000 cans, which is by far the largest amount of used beverage cans we’ve collected at Mardi Gras,” Ebner said.
The program is led by the nonprofit Grounds Krewe in partnership with New Orleans & Company, the City of New Orleans’ Office of Sustainability, Glass Half Full, Osprey Initiative and the Every Can Counts US campaign, with support from corporate sponsors including Entergy Corp. and Keurig Dr Pepper.
The initiative operates across several programs designed to capture recyclable materials during the festival. These include staffed recycling hubs along major parade routes, targeted post-parade cleanups and partnerships with bars, hotels and event venues that collect glass bottles, aluminum cans and unwanted parade items.
One of the largest components is the Can and Bottle Sweep program, which collects containers from streets after parades before city sanitation crews arrive. The 2026 version expanded to 40 blocks of the Uptown route following the Krewe of King Arthur and to 20 blocks on the West Bank after the Krewe of NOMTOC parade, organized by the New Orleans Most Talked Of Club.
Organizers said those post-parade sweeps collected 815 pounds of aluminum cans, 330 pounds of plastic bottles and 75 pounds of glass containers.
Additional recycling hubs placed along Napoleon Avenue and St. Charles Avenue during peak parade weekends collected cans, bottles and beads from paradegoers. Those hubs collected 4,868 pounds of aluminum, 1,351 pounds of plastic bottles, 3,840 pounds of glass containers and 5,944 pounds of beads and parade throws.
Ebner said the program focuses heavily on making recycling accessible along parade routes so visitors can dispose of containers without leaving the festival area.
“In addition to the dozen or so recycling drop-off centers where people can bring their material, there are also collection bins throughout the parade routes where they can drop them off easily,” Ebner said.
The aluminum cans collected during the festival are taken to a local scrap processor, EMR Metal Recycling, where they are sold as scrap and the proceeds are returned to the nonprofit Grounds Krewe to support future recycling efforts.
Mardi Gras recycling programs have expanded steadily in recent years. A pilot version of the initiative in 2023 collected 142,974 used beverage cans that were sold to a local metal recycling facility, generating revenue that was donated to charities and residents.
Organizers say the current effort captures only a fraction of the material generated during the festival, but the scale of participation continues to grow as recycling infrastructure expands along parade routes and at related events.
