India's 'Recycled' School Teaches Environmental Lessons [PHOTOS]

On a typical day in school, Kush Bhattacharya, 4, can disappear from his mathematics class to enjoy running on the grass barefooted. He hides from friends in a cow dung-made cave and goes back to reciting nursery rhymes in a read bus, which seems doubling up a classroom.

Kush is studying at the Aman Setu School in Pune, a technological and educational center located 3 hours drive from Mumbai.

Most parts of the school area are made of recycled materials. Old hoardings are used to construct roofs and plastic bottles for the walls. Uniforms are hand-stitched using environment-friendly "khadi" cloth.

Madhavi Kapur, the school founder who started with four students in 2008, thinks that everything they made is not about marketing the center. It's about what they believe and how they live. Presently, the school is teaching over 140 students with grade levels up to five.

Kapur said they didn't have the budget before, and one of his pas students, an architect, developed the idea of reusing recycled materials to construct the learning center standing on a piece of soil leased to him by her brother.

The money needed to build the school started with a humble 600,000, which is equivalent to $13,500. Kapur and Saurabh Phadke, his former student, formulated ways to construct the walls using old cement bags and mud.

The school started with two one-story buildings. Floors are covered with cow dung. Students sit on mats made out of rattan. Textbooks are collected from other students and nd a small garden was made where students plant vegetables.

Kapur's intention is to make her students environment conscious individuals. To make more rooms for learning, she got an old bus from the government's transport department and transformed it into a classroom.

Kapur wishes to spread her eco-friendly training methods to concrete schools.

"This is a way of life, we plan to continue it no matter where we go," Kapur said.

Students play at the window of a classroom constructed from mud, old cement bags and recycled wood at the Aman Setu school in Pune, about 190km (118 miles) from Mumbai, July 20, 2011. Almost every part of the school premises is made out of recycled material, including roofs made out of old hoardings, walls built from plastic bottles and hand-stitched uniforms made out of eco-friendly 'khadi', or handspun, cloth. Consisting of just two one-storeyed structures which house four classrooms, students at Aman Setu, which means bridge of peace, sit on rattan mats on a cowdung-plastered floor, use text books handed down from other students and grow their own vegetables in a small garden.

Almost every part of the school premises is made out of recycled material, including roofs made out of old hoardings, walls built from plastic bottles and hand-stitched uniforms made out of eco-friendly 'khadi', or handspun, cloth. Consisting of just two one-storeyed structures which house four classrooms, students at Aman Setu, which means bridge of peace, sit on rattan mats on a cowdung-plastered floor, use text books handed down from other students and grow their own vegetables in a small garden.

Students play inside an old government transport bus, stripped down into an improvised classroom, at the Aman Setu school in Pune, about 190km (118 miles) from Mumbai, July 20, 2011.

Students sleep on cloth mattresses inside their class room at the Aman Setu school in Pune, about 190km (118 miles) from Mumbai, July 20, 2011.

Students eat their lunch inside a classroom constructed from mud and old cement bags at the Aman Setu school in Pune, about 190km (118 miles) from Mumbai