It is Carnival season in New Orleans. That means gazillions of green, gold and purple Mardi Gras beads.
Once made of glass and cherished by parade spectators who were lucky enough to catch them, today cheap plastic bead necklaces from overseas are tossed from floats by the handful. Spectators sometimes pile dozens around their necks, but many are trashed or left on the ground.
A few years ago after heavy flooding, the city found more than 46 tons of them clogging its storm drains.
The “PlantMe Beads” are 3-D printed from a starch-based, commercially available material called polylactic acid, or PLA, graduate student Alexis Strain said. The individual beads are large hollow spheres containing okra seeds. That is because the necklaces can actually be planted, and the okra attracts bacteria that help them decompose.
