Middle School visit to TERI-GRAM

79 students from grades 6-8, accompanied by teachers visited the TERI-GRAM campus to learn about Sustainability.

The visit to TERI was marked by the lush green campus, with beautiful trees and different varieties of plants. They were taken to the ‘RETREAT’, which is a self-sustainable building designed by TERI.

The students were shown two short movies on sustainability and then they were taken around the RETREAT, which included the conference room and the reception, and also two blocks of rooms.

The entire building was made up of huge glass windows with and a glass roof photovoltaic cells interspersed in a way that it also allowed natural light to enter. The rooms had the Earth tunnel technology where cooling and heating both were done using fans and machines 4 feet below the Earth. This eliminated the use of any extra air conditioning or heating that is generally required.

The area was also lined with deciduous trees that provide cool shade in the summer months, but shed their leaves to allow the passage of natural light in winters. Also, all the waste water produced was taken to the Root Zone, which was lined with Phragmite plants, whose roots absorb impurities in waste water, making it suitable for irrigation purposes.

This helped them understand different components involved in making a building sustainable building. The students really enjoyed being in the surroundings and learning about the components.

They were then taken to the biogas chamber where they learnt how kitchen and agricultural waste were being turned into usable biogas. The medicinal plant area and the vermi-composting pit were also very intriguing to the students. They were shown how different varieties of fruit plants were grown in the lab and then transported to the fields.

The students also had a lot of queries, which the TERI officials solved.