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  • May 2020

Eco-Friendly Campus

All sustainable development goals come down to education”.
Eco-friendly literally means earth-friendly or not environmentally harmful. Eco is an abbreviation for ecology, the system of relationships between living things, and with their environment.

What is being Eco-friendly?

Being eco-friendly or environmentally friendly is becoming more and more significant. Eco friendly means, it is the act of living with intent. The intent is focused on not creating harm to environment, and to prevent as much harm from occurring to the environment through your communications with it. It is about changing the aspiration of how you live.

How to create a Sustainable Future through Education?

As a responsible citizen, student, parent, teacher, school staff member, or community volunteer, it is our rights to do all you can within your power to protect the environment in your school to provide a healthy, accessible place to learn. Environment-friendly school will teach students leadership skills and will help the students in understanding science’s role in the protection of environment and conservation of natural resources. Educating children about sustainable ways of living is a must. So, why not educate them in an eco-friendly and sustainable school. It may seem like a major ascend to get your school campus to be greener, but it’s quite simple. Here are 8 ways to make schools more eco-friendly.

1. Promote Recycling and add more Recycling bins

Recycling is an educational opportunity and it encourages continual behaviour that students can take outside the class room. Recycling provides a variety of contemporary, flexible and customizable recycling solutions. Recycling skills that are learned and developed in school will be used to help students make better waste outcomes in the future! The most important things-:

  • The best way to increase cooperation in your school’s recycling program is through education.
  • Provide opportunities for students, staff, and parents to ask questions about your recycling program and look for feedback on how to improve it.
  • Form a Green Team at Your School

2. Regulate classroom clean-up days.

Schools should inspire kids to plant trees and maintain them in and around campus. Classrooms are filled with clutter. To make a classroom eco-friendly:-

  • Organize some students to stay after school once a month to debunk.
  • Adopt a small plant in their classroom space
  • Host a Neighbourhood Clean-up
  • Turn Off the Water
  • Practice Good Temperature Control.
  • Set up a green student club

3. Improve Air Quality

One of the main benefits of a school with no congestion from cars at its gates is improved air quality. Improving your air quality is one of the yardsticks for greening your facility. Teachers and students spend the majority of their day inside, meaning we are all breathing the same, unfiltered air. Emissions from cars, in transit at the school gates means an increase in pollutants including nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter in the air. Ventilation is crucial in schools simply because of a large number of people. By installing energy recovery ventilation material, the school can save money by reducing energy usage, and the equipment can reduce air contamination coming into the building. By reducing air contamination, we can lower the chance of respiratory illness, asthma-related issues, allergy problems, and so on.

4. Energy Conservation Activities

Post gestures in every classroom, bathroom, hallway, teacher’s room, lunchroom, gym, and so on. It will remind the students and teachers to turn off lights when not in use, save water while washing, adjust the thermostats when leaving the rooms, not to waste paper etc. One of the best and accessible ways is by turning off all the computers before leaving for the day. Another great way to motivate students to apply energy-saving mind-set is to organize some kind of Activities such as:

  1. Green Classroom Pledge
  2. Energy Slogan Banners
  3. Make Energy Board Games
  4. An Environmental Collage

5. Homework on sustainability.

Children are the future. By teaching children at a young age to be environmentally familiar, you are building lifelong habits that could potentially make a powerful difference in the future of the earth. Setting 'eco-friendly' stuffs every week can be an engaging and learning experience for children. Expand your lessons on the environment by using these on Resource Utilization. Students research natural resources and map their sections, fill in a graphic organizer with ways to help the environment, along with other activities. This will help instil sustainable habits in the future.

6. Increased Environmental Awareness

Environmental Awareness is about being aware of the environment refers to all flowers and animals and includes all marine and wildlife. The earth is currently facing an increasing number of environmental challenges, which include climate change, global warming, droughts, water scarcity, floods, and pollution. Schools must start the conversation about environmental awareness should be a part of the curriculum in all schools. This will encourage young people to enlist in their environment to protect it and can help communities become more environmentally aware.

7. Rid your School of Toxic Chemicals

Schools can generate excessive amounts of plastic waste, which is toxic to people and the environment. Overcrowding, toxic waste sites, polluted indoor air, toxic chemical and pesticide use, mould, lead in paint and drinking water are some others. These all continue to threaten the health and well-being of our children at school. So to reduce children's cumulative exposure to chemicals and contaminants, there are some ways:

  1. Tell the children to wash their hands before they eat
  2. Use cleaning commodities that are third-party green certified
  3. Serve Organic foods

8. Green Ground Exercise

Promoting children's health, school grounds merit consideration as a potential setting for intervention. This paper explores how ‘green’ school grounds, which contain a greater diversity of landscaping and design features, affect the quantity and quality of physical activity among elementary school children. Form a school ground greening club. Hold club meetings to come up with green ideas. This is aimed at going beyond textbook theories and implementing theories in real life. Teachers must impart practical knowledge by introducing 'do at home' experiments like planting trees in the area or finding solutions to reduce and segregate waste in-house.