Mardi Gras Cleans Up!
The 41st Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras promises to beam with eco-friendly pride this year.
Tomorrow night over 300,000 people are expected to don their best rainbow-print, dust off their bedazzled jackets, and take to the streets for Sydney’s Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. Now in its 41st year, the parade promises to be a colourful mix of fish-nets and ABBA-mixes set against the backdrop of spectacular floats that represent Sydney’s diverse community.
It also promises to be Greener than ever, with the event pushing for a more environmentally friendly parade-going experience this year.
Terese Casu, The CEO of Mardi Gras (what a title), confirmed earlier this month that the parade would be phasing out single-use plastic in favour of more sustainable alternatives. In previous years, the parade has ordered more than 3 tonnes of glitter from China to douse the streets and clog your shower drain for weeks and weeks afterward. But with increasing public awareness about the harm of microplastics, this year’s parade has opted for more sustainable (but equally glittery) alternatives, and we couldn’t be happier!
This means that there will be no more balloons, no more plastic water bottles, and no more tonnes of glitter tomorrow night. Instead there’ll be plenty of fluorescent rainbow print, extravagant light shows, and never-ending masses of biodegradable glitter that’ll spread shimmering pride as they host their own decomposing party in our oceans.
So join the glittering Green of Mardi Gras tomorrow night and trade in that boring micro-plastic glitter for some sustainable alternatives, or collect Keep-Cups in every colour and coordinate some sort of rainbow Keep-Cup flag if you want.
And don’t forget to drag yourself (in drag perhaps?) to your local Clean Up Australia Event on Sunday. Add a sprinkle of that left-over glitter to the bags under your eyes and join us in a clean-up that can be as metaphorically cleansing as you need it to be.
Happy Mardi Gras from the Clean Up Australia Day Team!
