The Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya Alumni Association (JANVAA) honoured APSCC's founders for transforming Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya, Periyakalapet, Puducherry into a model global sustainability campus — a Green Campus Initiative that has since inspired environmental experts from four continents to visit and learn.
What began as a school-level effort to reduce waste and conserve resources grew into a comprehensive, replicable model of campus sustainability. Under APSCC's guidance, JNV re-imagined its grounds and daily operations around a circular, resource-recovering philosophy — treating the campus itself as a living classroom for environmental stewardship.
Five measures of a working green campus
The initiative combined five integrated interventions that turned the school into a self-sustaining ecosystem — each addressing a different waste or resource stream while reinforcing the others:
Wastewater treatment captured and reused water on site. Xeriscaping reduced landscape water demand through drought-tolerant planting. Biogas generation converted organic waste into cooking energy. Composting and vermicomposting returned nutrients to the soil, and organic vegetable and herbal gardens closed the loop — feeding the campus with produce grown from its own recovered resources.
Recognition and global attention
The Green Campus Initiative earned both national- and state-level awards, and its success drew a steady stream of visiting environmental experts from the United States, Europe, Brazil, and across India — who came to study the model first-hand. The initiative's food-waste work was documented in a research case study, "Evolving and Implementing Energy Recovering Strategy from Food Wastes at Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya," and the campus transformation was covered by The Hindu.
"Environmental awareness among students significantly increased."
— PRINCIPAL VINAYATHAN, JAWAHAR NAVODAYA VIDYALAYA
At the JANVAA'15 Alumni Meet, the association formally honoured APSCC's founders for their leadership in the project — recognising not only the environmental outcomes but the lasting shift in student mindset that the initiative achieved.
Aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals
The Green Campus Initiative advances several of the UN Sustainable Development Goals through its integration of education, clean energy, sustainable communities, responsible consumption, and land stewardship:
