For the last decade, Mardi Gras has produced an average of 1,123 tons of waste per year, according to the New Orleans Sanitation Department. After each parade, someone has to clean it up.

Each parade day, the city deploys between 200 and 500 workers, mostly hired on short-term contracts through the city’s workforce platform, Job1, or Ramelli Janitorial Services. Workers are assigned to a parade route on a first-come, first-served basis, with shifts lasting between 10 and 20 hours.

However, organizers with New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice, a local economic and labor rights group, complain that workers are undersupported by the city. After speaking with cleanup workers last season, the NOWCJR founded the We Are Not Disposable campaign this season to provide workers with more food, water and protective equipment.

The city does not clean up every parade, though. While larger krewes are provided with cleanup services for free, smaller ones and those on the West Bank are left to arrange their own sanitation. 

Around campus, Tulane University provides extra support to mitigate the impacts of Mardi Gras festivities. Campus Services teams “extend their daily litter sweep routes around campus to include the Broadway corridor during the Carnival season,” Dani Galloway, associate vice president of facilities, said in a statement.

This year, Tulane’s Office of Sustainability and Office of Fraternity & Sorority Programs joined forces to launch Manage the Mardi Mess, an annual litter sweep on the Saturday morning following Mardi Gras. 

“For the 2026 event, 10 students came out and together collected 68 lbs. of litter, over half of which were diverted to recycling,” Jordan Stewart, director of the office of sustainability, said in a statement. 

In addition to city cleanup efforts, local initiatives advocate for a more sustainable Carnival and cleanup process. Waste prevention nonprofit Ground Krewe’s RecycleDAT! initiative, launched in 2023, aims to reduce the amount of parade trash sent to landfills. Last season, the initiative recycled over 70,000 pounds of parade waste. 

This year, though, the efforts faced a funding shortfall. While the City Council allocated $200,000 for recycling this parade season, it failed to distribute that funding due to the city’s $222 million budget deficit. Additionally, Moreno cut about half of the Mayor’s Office of Resilience and Sustainability staff, including the director, further stifling recycling efforts.