The Oscars are over, and the world has moved on. No longer are we debating the merits of any particular film, or the validity of any given win. Now there are only two sets of people who care about the Oscars; the agents of the winners, who are all busy renegotiating their clients’ contracts, and amateur Los Angeles-based carpet fitter Paige Thalia.
Thalia found a small amount of viral fame this week, after she discovered the Oscars red carpet languishing in a skip the morning after the ceremony, and decided to kit out her home with it.
The story goes that, prior to the Oscars, while out on a walk, Thalia noticed rolls and rolls of pristine red carpet still encased in plastic wrapping. This made her wonder what happens to the carpet after the awards, which in turn sent her out on a mission around the back of the Dolby Theatre on Monday morning. While filming herself for TikTok, Thalia found a giant (and clean) skip filled with dozens of rolled-up pieces of carpet. “These are huge. Is it insane to take a huge piece?” she asked her viewers. Long story short, she now has a huge piece of the Oscars red carpet in her living room.
There is much to take from this. First, I cannot be the only person alive who assumed the Oscars red carpet wasn’t single-use. After all, this isn’t just a thin strip of carpet leading to the auditorium; the entire entrance to the Dolby Theatre is layered in the stuff. It stretches wall-to-wall and goes on for miles. The estimation is that there is 50,000 sq ft of the stuff. And, while much of it is recycled, some of it apparently gets binned after just a few short hours. The wastage is enough to make you queasy. Surely it would be better financially and environmentally if they bought a more durable carpet and reused it a few times.
Well, given that Thalia has exposed what happens to the carpet, perhaps they’ll do exactly that. Because now it’s almost guaranteed that at 4am the morning after the 2027 Oscars, a small army of bin-diving TikTokers will descend on the Dolby Theatre to nab some of the carpet for themselves. Security might find themselves overwhelmed. People might break into fistfights to grab the last segment. It could be chaos.
And the carpet is just the tip of the iceberg. While the Academy has attempted to improve its sustainability over the years – there are no single-use plastic bottles and the flowers are composted – each year’s ceremony is custom-designed and built, so you would assume that it still generates a lot of waste. Perhaps there’s time for this year’s guerrilla recyclers to make off with the fake mountain that Conan O’Brien climbed to declare himself superior to all his peers? What about his fake eagle Cicero? Was that a single-use eagle? Could an enterprising TikToker decorate their home with bits of leftover raptor?
Fortunately, the Academy at least treats its food waste sensibly, promising to donate any excess to Chefs to End Hunger. Again, this is a step in the right direction, although you have to wonder how LA’s hungry must feel about the state of late capitalism wealth distribution if they’re asked to feed their family with a handful of mini chocolate Oscars sprayed in 24-carat liquid gold.
Hopefully all the coverage given to Thalia will put a boot up the Academy to utilise more sustainable carpet practices next year. Plenty of other awards shows already do it. The Golden Globes committed to reusing its red carpet, while the Baftas use recycled carpets for their ceremonies. It might make for a slightly less viral TikTok, but surely the Oscars can commit to something along these lines next year.
The more pressing issue is whether or not Thalia’s new furniture will hold. In her TikToks she has alluded to the fact that the red carpet doesn’t seem to be designed to be used very much at all and that she has already begun trying to find ways to stop it from becoming threadbare. Maybe it’s this, above all else, that will push the Academy to change. After all, the Oscars are meant to represent the height of prestige. Nothing will hurt its reputation harder than a woman documenting how quickly the red carpet turns into a ratty rug.
