It's simply called Green School (without 'the'). The name, imposed over stylised bamboo shoots on its logo, even links the two words together. Nestled in rainforest beside a burbling river in Bali, this is an international school with a difference. Its main campus building, dubbed the Bamboo Cathedral, is made almost entirely of palm thatch and bamboo, but it houses a library, computer room, art and other facilities that any good international school would have.
I've brought my children to attend one of its green camps. After I say goodbye to them, Ben Macrory, the school's head of communications, shows me round. He has conducted 1,600 tours since the school opened in 2008, and the practice shows: he talks quickly, and packs each sentence with information ranging from the expected (the school started with 90 students and now has 250) to the esoteric (the giant bamboos foundations are treated with a boric acid solution to protect them from termites and powder-post beetles; the school also employs a full-time bamboo carver).
Much of his introduction, however, pays homage to the school's founders, Canadian entrepreneur John Hardy and his wife Cynthia, who moved to Bali in the '70s and made their fortune in making high-end jewellery, primarily silver and gems. At its peak, the company had 800 workers and was one of the largest employers on the island. The Hardys sold their business just before the 2008 economic crisis and set up the school on an idyllic spot midway between Denpasar and Ubud as a way to 'give back' to Bali. Their vision was to build a progressive school that would draw on the lessons of nature and the marketplace to educate children to become creative global citizens.
John Hardy wanted to make the school fully sustainable. When he couldn't find expertise in bamboo architecture that he wanted in Bali, he hired a German architect who had been working the rainforest of Colombia, and then established a company, P.T. Bamboo Pure, to build and furnish the school.
The school boasts a stream of initiatives that would impress any environmentally minded parent, including an organic garden where the children grow their own vegetables and a biogas facility that turns manure into methane for power generation. Electricity also comes from 108 solar panels, sponsored by French renewable-energy developer Akuo, and the company is funding small hydro-electric systems that are expected to be operational within a few months.
Conor McMullan, the school's Green Camp manager, concedes it does get noisy in the classrooms when heavy rain falls on the thatched palm roofs, but students are used to it. Their computers are put away in an airtight cabinet every evening, but humidity does take a toll, so there are plans to develop a solar-powered air-conditioned room to house the equipment most sensitive to the elements.