The Department of Aviation celebrated Earth Day on April 21 with its annual Earth Day information fair and awards ceremony at Philadelphia International Airport (PHL). The event highlighted the airport’s significant environmental accomplishments and honored this year’s Earth Day Award recipients, recognizing their dedication to sustainability initiatives.
The information fair featured exhibits from several community partners, including:
- Clean Air Council
- Fairmount Water Works
- Philadelphia Department of Sanitation SWEEP Program
- Philabundance
- Marketplace PHL
- Philadelphia Parks & Recreation
- SEPTA
- J.P. Mascaro & Sons
- Aero Aggregates
Attendees participated in hands-on environmental activities, including creating art from recycled materials with artist Natalie Kuenzi and engaging in interactive games like the sustainability trivia wheel and recycle toss.
“This is our 14th year celebrating Earth Day at the airport,” said Department of Aviation Chief Development Officer Api Appulingam as she opened the awards ceremony. “We’ve been moving full speed ahead on our efforts to green our airports. This year, we completed studies on decarbonizing our facilities and introducing sustainable aviation fuel. We are working to electrify our fleet, with 15 electric vehicles (EVs) and five EV fast chargers nearing completion on the PHL airfield. With our new construction waste recycling policy, we were able to recycle 99 percent of the waste from our airport construction projects – that is over 150,000 tons of material.”
Airport Sustainability Manager Jessica Noon spoke about the airport’s 2026 sustainability accomplishments: “We achieved Airport Carbon Accreditation Level 3 for both PHL and [Northeast Philadelphia Airport] PNE. It means we are among only 23 airports in the United States that track all greenhouse gas emissions on an annual basis and demonstrate reductions year over year. This includes everything from vehicle emissions to energy use and the energy grid. We now have a plan to get us to zero waste by 2035. Some of the progress we’ve made this year includes reducing energy usage and completing energy efficiency upgrades. Our parking garages saw major improvements when we converted all lighting to LED, resulting in approximately seven million kWh in savings.”
Interim CEO and CFO Tracy Borda concluded the event by presenting the the annual Earth Day Awards. The honorees were:
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The PHL Art Exhibitions Program, for raising environmental awareness by featuring artists that use recycled materials and focus on environmental themes such as local ecosystems, wildlife refuges, and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
- The PHL Landscape Refresh Project, which brings a sense of natural beauty to the airport by incorporating native plants, solar-powered lighting, and colorful visual elements to enhance Departures Road.
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Marketplace PHL/Philabundance Food Recovery Program, which collects prepackaged food from PHL concessions and redistributes it through local food pantries. Since 2019, the program has provided nearly 100,000 meals to local residents.
