Showing the way: Schools turn green chapters into reality

Neha Pushkarna

Government Girls Secondary School in Chhatarpur is located in the rocky Aravalli zone where water is scanty.Still the students maintain 105 species of native plants on the school premises. Not only that, there is no bore well but only proper management of MCD water that these girls depend on.

In far west, Salwan Public School at Old Rajinder Nagar recycles paper to make files for administrative use. The students have planted trees on the central verge under the metro bridge stretching from Rajendra Place to Karol Bagh. They even made cloth bags from scrap material and went out to different markets on Sundays to offer them to shoppers using polythene bags.

Rainwater harvesting, waste management, tree plantation, conserving energy were mere chapters in the environmental sciences book till a few schools in the city turned them into practice. Seventeen of them were given the annual Gobar Times Green Schools award by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) on Friday for their efforts to make sure that the environment lands up in wise hands tomorrow. Five city schools were awarded for making a change over the past few years while five others were felicitated for a successful debut in the Green Schools Programme launched by CSE in 2006.

While Salwan Public School (Morning) topped the list of changemakers in the city, the school in Chhatarpur became the best resource manager for effective conservation of land. Other change-makers were St Georges School at Alakhnanda, Sadhu Vaswani School, The Pinnacle School at Panchsheel Enclave and Deepalaya School near Kalkaji.

We have been associated with the green school programme for the past five years. Our students and the environment teacher are really passionate and motivated for this cause.In fact, we had started the plantation drive back in 1993.In 2003,we planted nearly 10,000 trees on either side of the Ridge though they were all uprooted on one side to build a wall for the Commonwealth Games, said Vandana Puri, principal, Salwan Public School (Morning).

Nearly 15,000 schools from 18 states are associated with the green school programme. Of these,144 qualified for the assessment for awards.There were 20 national toppers this year, including Salwan and St Georges from Delhi.Dolly Malhotra,a teacher and eco-club coordinator at St Georges, said: We segregate waste and use it to make vermin compost. Our building is also designed in a way that we have enough sunlight and we do not need to switch on lights most of the times. We have also linked such environment projects with continuous and comprehensive evaluation in school.

According to CSE, schools have gone beyond token gestures for conserving environment. They are real time managers now. They took stock of the situation, identified problems, found solutions and are making an impact now. Many have switched to clean transport system, 100% change-maker schools have declared themselves as zero-waste zones while 70% of them are making a shift as far as energy conservation is concerned, said Sumita Dasgupta, programme director at CSE.

Green Crusaders
The Change-makers

Salwan Public School
Old Rajinder nagar

St Georges School
Alakananda

Sadhu Vaswani International School for Girls

The Pinnacle School
Panchsheel Enclave

Deepalaya School
Kalkaji Extension

The Newcomers
Kendriya Vidyalaya
Vigyan Vihar

Mira Model School
Janakpuri

Starex International
Pitampura

Mount Abu School
Rohini

Andhra Education Society
Prasad nagar

Resource Managers
Water

Sachdeva Global School
Dwarka
Air

Sarvodaya Govt Senior Secondary School
Soami nagar
Land 

Govt Girls Secondary School
Chhatarpur
Energy

Bal Bharati School
Govt Girls Senior Secondary School at Pushp Vihar
K R Mangalam School ar GK II
Waste 

Salwan Public School (A)
Old Rajinder nagar

Clean message: From rainwater harvesting and waste management to tree plantation and energy conservation, students of these schools are passionate about saving the environment.