Punjab school bags environment award

New Delhi, Nov 27 (UNI) A government school in the small hamlet of Boormajra in Punjab's Ropar district, has been quietly living up to the Supreme Court's directive on the imperative of environmental education in schools.

It has bagged the top 'Green Schools Award' for environmental practices. The award, instituted by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), was conferred here today by NCERT Director Professor Krishna Kumar.

Kodaikanal-based Sholai School received the first runner up award and the New Delhi's Evergreen Public School got the third prize.

The schools have been awarded under CSE's 'Gobar Times Green Schools Programme'. Across the country, about 1,200 schools are using CSE's Green Schools Manual to benchmark their environmental performance.

Under this programme, schools audit their water use, waste generation, efforts in rainwater harvesting, in recycling, in conserving energy and in using public transport.

This then enables the students to prepare a report card of their own school's performance.

CSE Director Sunita Narain said,''Environment is the world's greatest teacher. But to learn from it, we have to practice what we believe is possible, and experiment with what we know should be done''.

''CSE's Green Schools Programme is a way of learning about our environment, about the resources that we use, about identifying our needs so that we can distinguish them from our greed. Because only then can we find ways of limiting our wants and reducing our waste so that we can turn green,'' she added.

Ms Narain said the aim of the rating has been to understand what can be done to improve the schools' performance on its environmental sustainability index and implement these steps in the coming years.

While the Boormajra-based school has won the top prize for implementing futuristic techniques for water management within its premises, Sholai School derives most of its energy from micro-hydel, solar and biogas sources and has collected precise information about energy consumption on campus.

Also, most of the waste produced by the school is recycled within the campus.

Evergreen Public School, third in the list, is one of the few schools in Delhi doing complete rainwater harvesting. It also recycles the water from spillage, and has done an audit of the flora and fauna on campus.

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