International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health | February 2018 | Vol 5 | Issue 2 Page 620 International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health Vaidya V et al. Int J Community Med Public Health. 2018 Feb;5(2):620-626 http://www.ijcmph.com pISSN 2394-6032 | eISSN 2394-6040 Original Research Article Green school audit of twenty two schools in Pune city Varsha Vaidya*, Jayashree Gothankar, Prasad Pore, Reshma Patil, Sujata Murarkar INTRODUCTION Climate change is one of the most important global environmental challenges facing humanity with implications for food production, natural ecosystem, freshwater supply and health, along with many other factors making it an issue of great priority to be addressed with immediate effect. 1 Humankind's activities are altering the world's climate by increasing the atmospheric concentration of energy- trapping gases (greenhouse gases), thereby amplifying the natural "greenhouse effect" that makes the Earth habitable. 2 Addressing the urgent need to introduce meaningful environmental education at the school level in India, CSE’s Green Schools programme (GSP) goes beyond nature education to get children to evaluate and precisely measure their own environmental footprint using the Green Schools manual. 3 The Green School audit is a tool designed to help school communities to audit their use of natural resources ABSTRACT Background: The Green school audit is a tool designed to help school communities to audit their use of natural resources. It provides schools with the methodology to become environmental managers by assessing themselves. Green school audit was part of green games initiatives of commonwealth youth games Pune 2008 with objective to carry out environmental audit of schools involving school children. Methods: The programme was carried out from March 2008 to October 2008 as a part of Green Games initiative of Commonwealth Youth Games. Twenty two schools voluntarily participated in this programme. Four medical students per school and one teacher from the Department of Community Medicine were posted per school to train one school teacher and twenty five school children about the audit. Each school was provided with a Green school manual; a do it yourself (DIY) guide that helped students to assess the five key elements that comprises their school’s environment namely air, water, land, energy and waste. Results: 15 schools were in green zone for air audit, 9 schools were in green zone for water audit, 11 schools were in green zone for land audit, 13 schools were in green zone for waste audit and 10 schools were in green zone for energy audit. Conclusions: This assessment helped each participating school to identify where it currently stood and where it should be with regard to the environmental standards prescribed in the manual. This is a learning programme for students helping them to develop environmentally conscious attitudes and ultimately a responsible behavior. Keywords: Green school audit, School environment awareness programme Department of Community Medicine, Bharati Vidyapeeth Medical College, Pune, Maharashtra, India Received: 20 November 2017 Revised: 21 December 2017 Accepted: 23 December 2017 *Correspondence: Dr. Varsha Vaidya, E-mail: drvarshavaidya@yahoo.co.in Copyright: © the author(s), publisher and licensee Medip Academy. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18203/2394-6040.ijcmph20170239