Govt moots 'green classroom' to combat air pollution

New Delhi: The AAP-led Delhi government has encouraged a new project in a government school to combat air pollution. A project under Design For Change (DFC) makes a regular classroom into a 'green classroom' by placing potted indoor plants in the classroom. The children of Government Boys Senior Secondary (GBSS) school in Tikri Kalan took up this initiative to improve the 'air quality' and to reduce health risks as Tikri Kalan is in close proximity with one of Asia's largest Poly Vinyl Chloride (PVC) market and factories. The plants are maintained by students.

The project headed by a Mentor Teacher at Directorate of Education, Vikas Drall, was started two months ago and has transformed one classroom in GBSS by planting 60 indoor oxygen giving plants which works as a natural air purifier. He said, "The children wanted air purifiers but that is too expensive. For green classroom itself we needed funds which came from Eco-fund in which government school gets 20,000 anually. Out of this we spent Rs 3,000 for this project to purchase plants and other relevant material from the nursery at a subsidised rate. If each school wants they can transform each classroom into green classroom gradually."

According to a research document published by NASA said, "Plants can play a major role in removal of organic chemicals from indoor air. The plant is very important in removing indoor air pollution either through its leaves or indirectly through the root or soil."

Plants such as Spider plant, Snake plant, aloe vera, palm, bamboo, tulsi, kroten, son of India, and rubber plant are put in the GBSS classroom in hanging pots.Their effort has also increased their happiness and in turn attentiveness and engagement in learning. Besides eliminating the pollutants from the class the indoor plants are inducing happiness in the students with low level of stress and anxiety, said Drall.

According to a study called 'Interaction with indoor plants may reduce psychological and physiological stress by suppressing autonomic nervous system activity in young adults' written by Min-sun Lee, Juyoung Lee, Bum-Jin Park, and Yoshifumi Miyazaki said, "Analysis of the Semantic Differential Method (SDM) data showed that the feelings during the transplanting task were different from that during the computer

task. The subjects felt comfortable, soothed, and natural after the transplanting task, whereas they felt uncomfortable, awakened, and artificial after the computer task."