Importance and Benefits of Green Audits to Education Institutions and Industrial Sectors
D. A. Shahira Banu
Department of Botany, Justice Basheer Ahmed Sayeed College for Women, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India.
S. Sheela
Department of Zoology, TKMM College, Alappuzha, Kerala, India.
N. Muralimohan
Department of Civil Engineering, K.S.R College of Engineering, Tiruchengode, Tamil Nadu, India.
N. Saranya
Department of Biotechnology, Nehru Arts and Science College, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India.
Amzad Basha Kolar
Department of Botany, The New College (Autonomous), Affiliated to University of Madras, Chennai-600 014, Tamil Nadu, India.
V. Sri Santhya *
Nature Science Foundation, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India.
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
Green auditing is a vital process that ensures the diversity of plants on an organization's campus, reducing ecological pollution and soil destruction. It is beneficial intended for biodiversity protection, landscape management, irrigation/economic water utilization, and maintaining natural topography. Green audits are conducted at educational institutions and industrial sectors using the National Building Code (NBC) Part 11 - A 360° Risk Assessment Approach to Sustainability checklist. The importance of green auditing lies in its ability to create an eco-friendly environment and encourage green initiatives was studied at Nehru Arts and Science College, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India. The results revealed that the campus has sufficient number of flora and fauna and established various gardens such as terrace, herbal, kitchen, zodiac, and decorative gardens. All the plants were labelled properly with common and botanical names and used biofertilizers, organic and green manures for the cultivation of plants. Agrochemicals and chemical fertilizers were minimally used to save the soil health and to protect the ecosystem from soil and water pollutions. The benefits of green audit included understanding the organization's internal and external green campus inspection and execution procedures, creating data on plant quantities, recommending biofertilizers, conserving economically valuable, rare, and endangered species, documenting rainwater collection systems, water reservoirs, percolation ponds, and irrigation technologies to the plants were well understood by the Oragnization with respect to the green audit.
Keywords: Green auditing, green campus, diversity of flora, landscape management, gardening, environmental sustenance