Green Audit

Green audit is the systematic identification, quantification, recording, reporting, and analysis of various establishments' environmental diversity components. It intends to investigate environmental practices both within and outside of the interested places that have an impact on the eco-friendly atmosphere.

The Confederation of Indian industry (CII) seeks to establish and sustain a climate favourable to industrial growth in India, collaborating with both industry and government through advisory and consultative procedures.  The Indian Green Building Council (IGBC), a division of CII, was established in 2001, regulates all green audits in India. Green audits are performed by Professionals accredited by IGBC as IGBC AP.

Benefits of Green Building:

A Green audit can provide several tangible and intangible benefits. The most immediate and obvious benefit is the decrease in water and operational energy costs from day one, throughout the building's entire life cycle.

Tangible benefits:

Intangible Benefits :

• Enhanced air quality
• Excellent day lighting
• Health & wellbeing of the occupants
• Conservation of scarce national resources
• Enhance marketability for the project

The goals of the environmental/green audits typically include

• To identify, classify, and correct environmental issues.
• To be aware of how an organization affects the environment, and vice versa
• To identify and control the impact of activities of organizations on environment.
• To suggest the best protocols for sustainable development of organization and environment.
• To assess environmental performance and the effectiveness of the measures to achieve the defined objectives and targets.
• To ensure all the natural resources are used appropriately in accordance with national environmental policy.
• To establish the parameters for maintaining health and welfare of the community of the organization.
• To set the procedure for disposal of all types of harmful wastes.
• To reduce energy consumption.
• To promote the usage of energy-saving and ecologically responsible appliances.
• To minimize the consumption of water and monitor its quality.
• To identify the risks of hazards and implement the policies for safety of stakeholders.
• To facilitate the stakeholders with different aspects of disaster management.
• To educate and enable all organization's stakeholders to take part in and contribute to environmental preservation.

The following phases are implemented to attain the objectives listed above. It is divided into three stages: pre-audit, audit, and post-audit. Each of these stages consists of a number of clearly stated objectives, each of which must be met by specific actions, with these actions providing results in the form of outputs at the conclusion of each step.

NAAC Accreditation and Green Audits for Colleges and Universities

All higher education institutions are required to perform green audits, according to the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC)-New Delhi. NAAC accreditation governs and specifies the performance and quality of Indian educational institutions. The NAAC rating demonstrates the standards of education, learning infrastructure, research facilities, and so forth.

The Green Audit, also known as an Environmental Audit, is a component of Criterion 7 - Institutional Values and Best Practices. A green audit plays an important role for establishing the best marks from the NAAC for a college or educational establishment. The audit reports show how colleges and universities utilize natural resources and energy in efficient

Priorities addressed in Green Building:

Water Conservation, Handling of household waste, Energy efficiency, Reduction in usage of fossil fuels, Reduced dependency on virgin materials, Health and wellbeing of occupants are major criteria for green building certifications provided mainly by IGBC and GRIHA.