This past Saturday, Vermont hosted its annual Green Up Day, a statewide effort to clean up Vermont’s roadways and natural spaces. The tradition first started in 1970 after being formalized by the state legislature. Since then, Vermonters have banded together every year on the first Saturday of May to ensure that the state remains as beautiful and green as possible.
On Green Up Day and during the week leading up to it, thousands of volunteers help to pick up hundreds of tons of trash. In 2025, Green Up Vermont reported that more than 25,000 volunteers cleaned up 95% of all roads in Vermont, picking up 427,000 tons of trash across the state.
The event is managed by volunteer coordinators from each town, who help community members obtain trash bags and other supplies to safely green up. Rebecca Trombley serves as the coordinator for her hometown of Starksboro.
“My job as coordinator is to get the word out, get the supplies to volunteers, and collect data for the organization. Collecting data is actually kind of tough, because we have so many stealth volunteers! So many people are working quietly, picking up the trash, and don’t necessarily feel a need to report their work. But the data does help keep the funding going for Green Up,” Trombley shared.
Each year, more and more local residents join in on the Green Up Day tradition.
“Vermonters take a lot of pride in our state. We value our natural landscape. I think that is why we are able to get such great participation for Green Up day every year. Community interest and involvement has always been robust across the state. Year after year, I have faithful volunteers tending to their stretch of road, and every year new folks join in,” Trombley said.
Chad Chamberlain, a Ripton resident, was one of many people who participated in Green Up Day. For him, it is an annual tradition.
“We try to get out every year, and we try to do at least a section of the road that we’re on,” Chamberlain said in an interview with the Campus. “You can sign up for various sections at the town hall, and you get every road in town covered by someone.”
Chamberlain, like many other Vermont residents, sees Green Up Day as a chance to get involved and work to better his local community.
“I think it’s a way of taking care of your immediate neighborhood, and it’s a way to give back,” Chamberlain added. “You drive on the roads every day, and you see the trash, and you think somebody should be picking that up, so why not me?”
Besides individual community members, many environmental organizations also help make Green Up Day possible. Middlebury College’s Student Government Association (SGA) Environmental Sustainability Committee led a trash pickup competition. Students were able to form teams of four to ten people and compete to win declining balance for each member of their team.
“The goal for the Green Up Vermont competition was to get Middlebury students involved in the greater Vermont community in a statewide tradition that highlights our mission as SGA Environmental Sustainability. We know students can get busy this time of year, and we thought that by creating a competition, this would be a fun way to give back to the community and step away from the books,” SGA Environmental Sustainability member Sophia Galuppo ’26.5 said.
The competition, coordinated with the Green Up Vermont organizers, aimed to get more students involved in Green Up Day.
“SGA Environmental Sustainability collaborated with the Green Up organizers to facilitate more ease in getting students involved, such as providing trash bags and other supplies and designating easy drop-off locations. We care a lot about the environment and community and believe a friendly competition was a great way to bring the two together,” Galuppo explained.
Lily Jensen ’28 and her team won the competition.
“I think it was really great to get outside in the morning at a time where people were really overwhelmed with work and to assemble an eclectic crew of different friends from different groups who were interested, so it was a really fun and spontaneous adventure,” Jensen shared.
Even students who didn’t participate in the SGA Environmental Sustainability competition found ways to help out with the Green Up Day efforts. The student organization Sunday Night Environmental Group hosted a hike for members at Chipman Hill, during which they cleaned up the trail.
Jeremy Buss ’29 led the hike and said he encouraged the group to look out for garbage along the trail.
“We came together and picked up trash as we walked. Being in a community together, being with nature, and removing trash is a really valuable experience for us,” Buss said.
Although Green Up Day 2026 is now over, interested students can keep an eye out for next year’s activities while making a daily conscious effort to keep the state clean.
Editor’s note: Lily Jensen ’28 is a staff writer for The Campus.
Anna Doucet ‘26 (she/her) is a Staff Writer.
Anna is from Bristol, Vermont. At Middlebury, Anna studies Psychology, French, and Global Health. She is on the board of the Sunday Night Environmental Group, volunteers for Language in Motion, and is a research assistant in the Psychology Department. Off campus, Anna works as an educator at the Expanded Learning Program at Bristol Elementary.
