Every year, Brazilians in Rio de Janeiro put on the biggest show in the world: Rio Carnival. In an event that fills locals with pride and enchants tourists from all over the world, samba schools parade down the Sambadrome road-stage built specially for the event with costumes, floats and samba music. It’s a spectacle of performances that lasts four days and generates up to 70,000 temporary jobs every year. In 2026, the event is expected to inject nearly $10 billion Brazilian reais (US$2 billion) into the local economy.
But a big cultural party, as magical as it is, creates a lot of waste. In 2019, the four days of parades at the Sambadrome generated 293 tons of trash, both from the stands, where the audience watches the parade, and from the road-stage where the samba schools perform their acts. The party generates similar amounts of trash every year. But since 2022, the Sustenta Carnaval project has rescued costumes that would otherwise end up in landfills and upcycled them in a myriad of creative ways.
The samba schools putting on the show recycle 95 percent of their costumes and floats internally. But the other 5 percent of materials — usually costumes sold to the public taking part in the parade that are abandoned in the Sambadrome after the performances — used to end up in landfills. Those costumes are usually made of materials that take years to decompose, like polyester and plastic.
Sustenta Carnaval partners with the Independent League of the Samba Schools of Rio de Janeiro, the Municipal Secretariat of Environment and Climate, and Rio de Janeiro’s Municipal Urban Cleaning Company to gather the costumes left behind when the event ends each year.
“The proposal is to transform what would be waste into creative, educational, and social raw material, showing that the greatest show on Earth can also be a global benchmark in environmental responsibility,” Mariana Pinho, founder of the Sustenta Carnaval project, told TriplePundit. “In addition to the environmental impact — avoiding emissions, methane generation and microplastic contamination — the project strengthens creative chains, expands access to cultural inputs, and contributes to restarting parades in municipalities that had interrupted their activities.”
In five years, Sustenta Carnaval has rescued 66 tons of waste that is resold, rented, donated to educational programs, and used to make new products, Pinho said. Part of the waste is transformed into bags and accessories in partnership with the Women from the Global South Institute, which generates income for migrant women and local communities. The project also runs artist residencies and upcycling programs at the University of the Arts London and Norwich University of the Arts in the United Kingdom, and participates in festivals such as the U.K.’s World of Music, Arts and Danceand Notting Hill Carnival.
In an effort to sell the rescued materials to the public in Rio de Janeiro, Sustenta Carnaval filled a house in the city’s Gamboa neighborhood with piles of the materials gathered over the last five years. Members of the public can buy the discarded costumes for $10 a kilogram (about 2 pounds). Most either use the costume as it is or use the materials to make their own costume for Rio’s street carnival, a separate event that takes place during the same period and is free for everyone to attend.
“Upcycling these materials requires us to think about how to make something that will last a long time,” said Lohanne Tavares, a partner costume designer of the project. Tavares teaches people how to upcycle the costumes in the Sustenta Carnaval house, showing buyers how they can create costumes with longevity that avoid the landfill altogether.
“Having that objective is important, because if we make a costume we are going to throw away, it doesn’t make a lot of sense for the project,” Tavares added.
On the house’s second story, Tavares teaches the basics of upcycling to the attendees of her workshop. It’s one in a series of workshops offered by the project leading up to carnival week. Attendees have 15 minutes to pick the materials they want to use. Then, on a rectangular white table, the participants gather around the discarded materials with scissors and hot glue guns, ready to let their creativity flow. Sustenta Carnaval also offers workshops on how to make banners, hand props and headpieces with the recycled materials.
“We’ve reached a boiling point where we should only be making things with materials that already exist,” Tavares said. “That’s more difficult because it requires more curiosity and that we work outside of our comfort zone.”
Upcycling a piece of clothing or a costume calls for more strategic planning and attentive observation than making something from scratch. That’s why the workshops are important. “Before cutting or interfering with the material we are upcycling, it is important to observe how the fabric behaves, where it stretches or snags, how heavy it is, and what the actual size is,” Tavares said. “This assessment prevents unnecessary mistakes and guides the creation process from the very beginning.”
Most of the people at the workshop TriplePundit attended were creating costumes for the street parties, which also create large amounts of trash. In 2025, Rio de Janeiro’s Municipal Urban Cleaning Company collected nearly 8 tons of waste from the streets after five days of street parties, including costumes dropped or left behind once the party was over.
Also seeking to address this issue, designer and content creator Amanda Britto has organized costume exchange events for her community since 2019.
“I had stuff that didn’t make a lot of sense for my carnival collection,” Britto said. “Sometimes you buy fabric, and there’s some left over, or there’s a top you don’t like anymore, so I thought, “Why not exchange these items with people who might just be looking for the items you’re getting rid of?’”
Organizing all the costumes and accessories brought in by the public takes a team of about 30 people, and the event is attended by dozens more. Members of Britto’s online community volunteer to coordinate logistics, going through the items and categorizing them according to type and value.
“Making those pieces circulate from person to person gives those items a longer life,” Britto said. Plus, there’s the benefit of community building. For Britto, a highlight of the exchange event is meeting her online community in person.
This year, Britto partnered with Sustenta Carnaval, picking a few key pieces from the piles of costumes to offer up in her exchange event. “Those pieces won’t necessarily be used as they are,” she said. “People will probably cut that up, remove key materials and rebuild something. I think the exchange has that element too, of instigating people’s creativity.”
Britto has even run into people wearing the pieces they got from the exchange during the street parties. “It’s so special to see how the event has grown with my community and how it has improved over the years,” she said.
Events and workshops like these highlight the importance of making Carnival more sustainable as climate change accelerates. “Sustainability is no longer a trend. It’s a necessity,” Tavares said. “We will have to adapt for our own survival.”
Ultimately, Tavares said she hopes the upcycling spirit she teaches people before carnival is taken beyond this year’s party, which takes place from Feb. 13 to 18. “It’s important that we control our impulse to consume, that we live more in the present, and learn to reuse and resignify the things around us,” she said.
