Secretary director of T&T Coalition of Services Industries (TTCSI) Mahindra Satram-Maharaj says 99 per cent of the imported raw materials used for Carnival costumes are toxic. He was speaking at TTCSI’s “I AM” Secondary School Green Building prize-giving ceremony, at the Hilton Trinidad, St Ann's, on Wednesday. Satram-Maharaj said, “According to a recent baseline study undertaken by the Mas Transformation Secretariat, more than 750,000 pounds of waste are generated from Carnival costuming.
“The study has shown that all the imported materials that went into our Carnival costumes for the last 15 to 20 years, 99 per cent of those materials are extremely hazardous.” He said “31 out of 32 imported raw materials used in the manufacturing of Carnival costuming are highly toxic and detrimental to the environment.” When asked yesterday about the casting of Hosay tadjahs into the sea, he said he could not speak for materials used in other practices other than Carnival.
Satram-Maharaj, who is also President of the National Carnival Development Foundation (NCDF) said he wanted to believe that all materials used for any kind of costuming in T&T were conventional and found to be very harmful to the environment.
He said some natural fabrics such as cotton were hazardous because of the dyes used. Satram-Maharaj said while artificial feathers were “very bad,” nothing was wrong with harvested feathers. The problem, he said, was with the dyes that were either carcinogenic or highly toxic. He said new materials that were environmentally friendly, renewable, and can be recycled to make Carnival costumes to reduce import costs will be unveiled in April 2015.
Satram-Maharaj said it was the organisation's goal to make T&T mas 100 per cent “green.” He said that the Carnival costuming carbon footprint has been huge, but more will be revealed when the secretariat makes the report public shortly. Minister of State in the Ministry of Environment and Water Resources Ramona Ramdial addressed the gathering earlier on what the Government was doing to protect the environment.