Edhat Staff
Photo: wikimedia
Source: City of Santa Barbara
Cascarones go hand in hand with Fiesta. They are fun, especially for children, who love to crack them open over each other’s heads.
Yet these confetti-filled eggs present a challenge for City streets maintenance crews and for our creeks and ocean. The City has been installing filters over all the storm drain inlets on State Street to keep the confetti from entering the storm drain system, creeks, and the ocean. The eggs are often filled with Mylar—a polyester film—that poses an environmental hazard for marine life, including whales, turtles, dolphins, seals, fish, and water-fowl, who think it’s food. It is also just plain litter, which has to be cleaned up with street sweeping, and by hand.
Enjoy the cascarones, but be mindful that this fun comes at a cost, both for cleanup and to wildlife. Avoid purchasing cascarones filled with Mylar or plastic material.
Would it be so terrible to ban the use of mylar and other non-biodegradable materials in cascarones used locally? It is not only the confetti filling but the decorations on the cascarones (also mylar/polyester/plastic) which become a litter problem. I cannot understand why this ban hasn’t been instituted. We are an oceanside community and need to protect our beautiful ocean and its inhabitants and the local wildlife. Ban the polyester and go back to good old paper filling and crepe paper decorations. Preferably materials not loaded with dyes and perfumes.
Hate to see all those plastic straws go to waste. Shred them to fill the cascarones? (Just kidding.)
Considering how many eggs must be eaten to later become the thousands Fiesta cascarones, why are we still talking about “food insecurity” in this county? Requiring clean-up cost permits to sell these is reasonable because right now it is all gain for the sellers, and all pain for the taxpayers stuck with the clean-up costs. There needs to be a better fair share.
I agree. Plastic or other non-biodegradable materials should be illegal.
Why not charge the people selling them a fee for clean up when Fiesta or Summer Solstice or anytime after a festival to pay for clean up! Just go down State street day of parade they all don’t have selling permits for the selling of Cascrarone eggs it is terrible they take up the whole sidewalk and there’s a mess when parade is over!! Make them pay to sell the eggs it’s only fair plus rumor has it they make over $5,000 from Fiesta! Come on why don’t they have permits to sell them on State street sometimes you can’t even get into a shop due to they have took over the whole sidewalk! Where are you Sheriff Brown onthis topic or where is JP from KEYT to report on it too!!
All these vendors are getting ridiculous, and annoying. Snack vendors honking their horns down the sidewalk every day. Fiesta vendors with their plastic confetti. 4th of July vendors with their noise-generating plastic lighted toys flying in your face on the 4th. What’s next?
SB can ban plastic straws but not plastic confetti? That should have been the first thing banned.
It is a violation of the littering law to break a confetti filled egg spilling it’s contents on the sidewalk. If police cited each person who was seen committing this violation of the law, the problem would be reduced!
They should simply ban them. They invite people to smash the eggs on other people’s heads. What is the point of that other than assualt? Just because something is bio-degradable (egg shells) why would we want it dumped on our sidewalks and streets. It probably takes years for it to actually degrade.
Good luck with banning this time honored SB tradition. Best you can do is to try and make it more environmentally friendly.
It’s environmentally destructive besides being a mess. Fish eat that stuff thinking it’s food. It doesn’t get digested. That and plastic fill up their guts until they slowly starve to death. For what? A few minutes pleasure? How stupid to allow it. Ban it, fine them.