Emphasis on green in this Gujarat school

Nature has been an inspiration to many since time immemorial and talk of going back to the nature in academics too is not new. However, there are very few who would walk the talk and dare to tread the path not taken by many. 

Virendra Rawat, a man from Tehri-Garhwal hills in Uttarakhand, can be called one such person. Rawat today is one of the important contributors in the field of Green School concept that is fast gaining popularity. The US-based Green School Alliance is one such association of thousands of schools across 49 countries. Rawat is the director-academic of Smt Bhadraben Butala Kalrav Academy for National Education (B-KANAE) in small town of Modasa in Arvalli district of North Gujarat. The town has a population of less than 100,000 as per 2011 census. But Rawat and B-KANAE have left their green imprint on the education world that transcends boundaries, with Rawat making a presentation on Green School movement in India at the Annual Massachusetts Green Schools Summit at Boston in 2015.

“Globally, there are different models of Green Schools but our model addresses all the five basic elements of nature – Prithvi (earth), Jal (water), Agni (sun), Vayu (air) and Akash (sky).  “At our school we work to conserve and make optimum use of all these five basic elements of the nature as well as for educating our children,” Rawat says. Explaining the concept, Rawat said their model involves creating a healthy environment for students to learn and save energy, water and other resources by finding solutions from green practices.

“First comes Prithvi. We have a three-acre campus at Modasa school. We decided to make the most judicious use of the campus and the building. We first carried out a detailed analysis of 20 rooms constructed, whether we have been able to use these rooms judiciously so that we do not end up adding more concrete than we require,” he says.

Next, the school focused on water. Modasa generally struggles with volume of water at times. The school basically had two sources of water. “We know that water can be managed but cannot be generated by humans. We carried out a detailed audit to implement steps for best use of water available. We introduced use of rain water harvesting,” Rawat says. But to him, the best way to do so was to identify leakages, before plugging them.

“We had a gardener who would come daily in the afternoon and water the plants and trees. We decided that he was wasting too much of water and so we asked our kids to water the plants and trees once a week. They would water the plants just around or after the sunset.  This helped water reach the roots as it did not evaporate, helping us save almost 70 per cent water,” Rawat says.

Even the taps installed in the school were done in a way to conserve maximum water. The flush in the toilet normally uses about 6 litres, but the school installed a tank with a reduced capacity of 4 litres. All these steps too helped save water. The results were for everyone to see. Before water audit and initiatives of those in the school, children consumed about five litres of water per day but now the average stands at 3 litres per child per day.

The third element was that of fire or electricity. The school had an electricity bill of anywhere between Rs 50,000 and 60,000 per month. The school not only taught its children and staff the importance of switching off the lights when not required but also installed solar panels to generate its own electricity. Today, it is near self-sufficient in its power needs.

The fourth element is that of air. Here, Rawat was inspired by the speech of former President, the late APJ Abdul Kalam at Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad. “Dr Kalam said that every tree gives out about 25 kg of oxygen which is good enough for 25 children. So we did tree plantation in the school in a way that we maintain the ratio of one tree per 25 children and one teacher.”

To utilise Akash or sky, the school decided to make the campus wi-fi and introduced use of tablet for students to study. This was also done with a purpose to reduce use of paper and save trees from being cut. “Each child consumes stationery equivalent to cutting down of one tree every year. But every child must also learn skill of handwriting. We know that this skill is developed best till fifth class and after that we encourage them to use tablets.”

But children also learn to make optimum use of paper too. The school has a paper recycling machine which the students use to make paper every Saturday. The children are also encouraged to re-use plastic to make artistic showcases and hung higher up in the air so that they do not mix with the earth.

The school has also introduced a waste management and recycling system with a compost pit and vermi-composting shed, getting a rating under the National School Sanitation Initiative for CBSE schools.

Apart from green practices for optimum utilisation of natural resources, the school has also developed a “green curriculum” that makes students aware of the need to care for the environment through activities, games and projects.

“The academic part is designed such that students learn to protect and respect local environment, bio diversity. Like audit of water usage, green cover in the campus, the children also document kind of flora and fauna in and around the campus, be it rabbits, birds, rats, etc. We teach them to minimise use of chemicals by not using any chemical paint in the school. Even when we were infested by rats, we did not use chemical poison. We just introduced two cats and that took care of our rat menace,” Rawat says proudly.

Rawat, who began working by converting B-KANAE in to Green School since 2010, today dreams of seeing all the schools in the country as Green Schools. So when in 2012, he was called in by the Gujarat government to help convert 100 schools in to Green School, he jumped in. Green harms none. If 600-700 students at B-KANAE can benefit from Green School, so can each child. Today almost 61 of the schools identified in 2012 are remodeled in Gujarat as Green Schools.