As many as nine schools in Punjab have received the 'green' tag. Around 74 schools from the state had reported submissions. Ludhiana bagged the best district award with 34 submissions and 6 schools rated ‘green’.
While schools from Lalitpur in Uttar Pradesh, Bengaluru in Karnataka, Hyderabad in Telangana and Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu bagged the top honours at the 2021-22 Annual Green Schools Awards. The awards are given by Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) based on results of an annual environmental audit conducted by the schools themselves within their premises.
550 schools from across the country vied for the honours; 15 of these received the top awards, and 110 were tagged as ‘green’. Each school which undertook the audit, was assessed by CSE’s Green Schools Programme (GSP) on its resource consumption practices in the areas of waste management, energy efficiency and air pollution control initiatives.
CSE director general Sunita Narain said, “CSE’s green school programme is important because in some ways, in the small steps we take, we are showing that we can be the change that we believe in. Each one of the schools that participated in the audit is an inspiration to the other.”
Tushita Rawat, programme manager, environment education, CSE, said, “GSP rates schools on resource efficiency and felicitates those who demonstrate positive and measurable environmental changes in the campus, such as segregating waste at source, phasing out unclean fuels and inefficient lighting and adopting renewables, etc.”