In Burlington, Earth Day is an opportunity to step away from late-semester assignments and celebrate our planet. April 22 typically sees the UVM campus and surrounding areas bustling with trash-bag-toting Catamounts on a mission to clean up their home. Others plant trees and flowers where birds and insects will lay their eggs and raise their young during Vermont’s beautiful summer. 

For UVM’s Office of Sustainability, Earth Day is also a perfect occasion to report how the university has progressed over the year towards the goals laid out in its Comprehensive Sustainability Plan (CSP). Fresh off its recent Gold-level STARS sustainability rating, and with Earth Day 2026 on the horizon, there’s plenty of progress to share.

Among the highlights from this year’s report are multiple carbon emission reduction projects.  The new chiller at the Health Sciences Research Facility means 1,621,511 fewer pounds of carbon emissions annually (the equivalent of taking 629 cars off the road for a year). An air handler project at Howe Library will lower carbon emissions by 132,333 pounds per year (that’s 53 more cars’ worth). 

Over 5,000 square feet of new pollinator gardens have sprung up over the past year across UVM’s campus, from an apiary meadow in front of the Interfaith Center to a “soft landing” area among the trees between Central Campus Residence Hall and Fleming Museum.  Meanwhile, more than half of waste produced on campus is now diverted from landfills to more carbon-friendly destinations like composting and recycling.

How people get to campus is changing, too. Transportation & Parking Services worked with Green Mountain Transit to ensure bus service is offered at UVM’s new Market Street apartments. A vanpool program for commuting employees is now available.

Established in 2023, UVM’s Comprehensive Sustainability Plan formalized and unified a wide assortment of existing efforts across campus to embed sustainability into everything the university does, from academics to operations, says Office of Sustainability Interim Director Caylin McCamp.

“The intention was to get organized and aligned in a university-wide way,” McCamp recalls. “There is so much good sustainability-focused work happening at UVM, and we are helping to bring it under the same umbrella.” Cementing the plan, she says, was “an opportunity to pull everything together and make some bigger, bolder goals than any individual unit or department would be able to work towards on their own.”

With the work now well underway, McCamp says, more items are checked off with every passing year. To help communicate the cumulative progress in an interactive way, Gabe Christiansen ‘27, an intern in the office’s Sustainable Solutions Lab, created a StoryMap that calls out highlights from each section of the plan and shows where changes are happening on campus accompanied by images of various projects. Last year’s report detailed campus energy savings equivalent to 96 cars taken off the road, UVM increasing its local food purchases to over 20% of food on campus, and 60% increased participation in the university’s reusable food container program. The Plan completes its third year with its central focus, as always, on reaching carbon neutrality by 2030.

Says McCamp, “These types of goal couldn't have been made or met without leadership support and a commitment at the highest level.”