Turns Out the Oscars Didn’t Trash Its Red Carpet After All

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The red carpet got a lot of attention at the Oscars this year — but it wasn’t just because of who was strolling on it.

On March 16, the day after the 2026 ceremony, production assistant Paige Thalia posted a TikTok of herself arriving at the Dolby Theatre. As crews broke down the awards show setup, she had hopes of taking a piece of the carpet home to use as a rug in her apartment. The video follows her stumbling upon dumpsters with rolls and rolls of the Oscar red carpet inside and lugging one section back to her place as prized new decor (after a good vacuuming).

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The TikTok quickly went viral, racking up more than 6 million views, with hundreds of commenters expressing shock and horror that the Oscars carpet would be used for just a few hours and then be thrown away. Suddenly, the Academy found itself getting beaten up on social media as yet another grotesque example of Hollywood’s wasteful ways.

As it turns out, though, there’s a bit more to the story.

@hellopaigethalia

I set a little personal mission of getting this 3 days ago and it actually happened omg #oscars #redcarpet #hollywood

♬ Long Cool Woman – MOONLGHT

For starters, the dumpsters full of Oscar red carpet material were actually en route to being recycled, confirms Rob Thiess, co-director of the California Carpet Stewardship Program of CARE (the Carpet America Recovery Effort). Thiess tells THR that CARE has worked with Event Carpet Pros Inc., which supplies the Oscars carpet, for the past four years; from the Dolby, the carpet is transferred to the Los Angeles Fiber carpet recycling center in Vernon, where it is broken down into pellets. Theiss says these carpet pellets can be made into about 125 different products, including computer cases and car parts.

The Academy adds that the Oscars carpet is itself made from recycled materials.

Unfortunately, this sort of environmental mindfulness is not the norm. Hollywood puts on hundreds of events each year — premieres, galas and FYC events — and the majority of the time those red carpets are not recycled. More often than not, they end up in the trash, particularly those with customized designs, logos and cuts that make it tough to be reused.

“So many people still don’t know that carpet is recyclable,” says Theiss. CARE supports more than 179 public drop-off sites throughout California (which is drastically ahead of other states in this initiative) and collects 80 million to 90 million pounds of carpet per year, but most of that comes from residential sources. And so he is making a push to get Hollywood on board as well, having already locked up a deal to recycle the carpet at next year’s Super Bowl in L.A., on top of his work with the Oscars. But because entertainment events are so fragmented — with different studios, streamers, event planners and carpet companies involved with each one — it has been slow going to organize a carpet recycling system for the larger industry.

“Quite frankly, it’s really low on the totem pole when it’s dollars and cents on the front side and making sure that production goes smoothly,” Theiss explains. “When it comes to breakdown, it’s just, ‘Get it out of here, on to the next,’ ” as he admits it’s “not a glamorous thing” to think about.

Sheila Morovati, founder and CEO of environmental nonprofit Habits of Waste and a longtime advocate pushing to make Hollywood more sustainable, notes that carpets don’t necessarily need to be broken down into pellets to get re-purposed. She points out that carpets could easily be donated to schools or homeless shelters after their big moments. Or, perhaps more likely in the bottom line-driven entertainment industry, she suggests studio storage facilities — much like the storerooms used for costumes — where “red carpets can go and live and be clean and ready to be installed. And then they just roll it back up and bring it back into these warehouses so that the studio just holds onto it,” which would save on the cost of getting a new carpet for each event.

Environmental Media Association CEO Debbie Levin also makes a case for increased use of rentals: “I don’t understand why renting a carpet would not be the way to go because then it’s being reused constantly. They’ve got every color in the world, and you really don’t need a logo on a carpet because [photographers and press] are not shooting that.” She adds, “There’s so much material that goes into a carpet, and not all of it is made from the greatest materials, so at least if you’re using it 50 times, you could feel better about it.”

It would, of course, take extra thought and planning to make this happen, which may be a tough ask for a business focused more on the big on-camera backdrops than on how to properly dispose of the backdrop afterward. But, as Theiss notes, that disposal process is key, especially for carpet material that “doesn’t break down for 100 million years; it doesn’t produce methane gas, it can’t be collected and make power generation out of it. It’s just an unruly material that fills up our space.”

He continues, “We’ve got to think about our future, our kids or grandchildren and what we’re leaving. We have how many capped landfills and how much material is in there that won’t break down? So [it’s about] really focusing on that and then taking those materials and turning them into new products.”

This story appears in The Hollywood Reporter’s 2026 Sustainability Issue. Click here to read more.

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