Earth Day Crossword Puzzle Printable

Print a criss-cross Earth Day crossword with its answer key, or press New puzzle to draw other clues.

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Earth Day Crossword

Read each clue and write the answer in the squares that start at its number, one letter in each square.

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Word bank

  • Cycle
  • Rhino
  • Scrap
  • Sewer
  • Soot
  • Spill
  • Stump
  • Waste

Type in a square and the next one takes over. Tap the same square again, or press Space, to switch between Across and Down. Arrow keys move around the grid, Enter goes to the next clue, and a clue takes you to its squares.

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Answer key: Earth Day Crossword

1S2SCOROA3STUMPE4WA5STEEP6RHINOL7CYCLE

Across 3 STUMP · 4 WASTE · 6 RHINO · 7 CYCLE

Down 1 SCRAP · 2 SOOT · 3 SEWER · 5 SPILL

Next step Find Earth Day words in a word searchUnscramble Earth Day words

All 160 clues

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Reduce, Reuse, Recycle 25

  • Aluminum Light metal of soda cans
  • Bin Blue curbside container, often
  • Bottle Narrow-necked holder for juice or soda, capped with a twist top
  • Cardboard Stiff brown material of shipping boxes
  • Compost Backyard heap where banana peels and grass clippings slowly turn dark and crumbly
  • Donate Hand a bag of outgrown coats to a charity instead of tossing it
  • Glass Clear, breakable material that can be melted and remade again and again
  • Jar Wide-mouthed container with a screw-on lid
  • Landfill Huge pit where garbage trucks unload, later covered with dirt
  • Litter Candy wrappers and cups left on a sidewalk instead of in a trash basket
  • Newspaper Daily pages of print, often bundled for pickup
  • Packaging Boxes and wrap that a product comes in
  • Plastic Material of most milk jugs and shopping bags
  • Recycle Shred, crush or pulp used material so a factory can make it into something new
  • Reduce First of the three Rs: use less
  • Refill Top up the same container once more
  • Repair Patch a bike tire or sew on a button so the thing lasts longer
  • Reuse Find a second job for an old thing
  • Scrap Leftover bit of metal or cloth
  • Secondhand Already owned by somebody else
  • Sort Separate items into groups by material
  • Thrift ___ store: charity shop with racks of used clothing and shelves of old books
  • Tote Cloth bag carried to the store week after week
  • Upcycle Turn a worn-out thing into something better, like a tire into a swing
  • Waste Anything thrown away as no longer useful

Renewable Energy 27

  • Battery It stores electricity for later
  • Biomass Wood, crops and other once-living material burned for heat
  • Bulb An LED one lights a lamp
  • Carpool Share one ride to school or work
  • Coal Black rock burned in some power plants
  • Conserve Use carefully so there is enough for later
  • Dam Beavers build a small one of sticks and mud; engineers build a giant one of concrete
  • Efficient Doing the same job with less energy
  • Electric Kind of car that plugs in
  • Fossil ___ fuel: energy source formed from ancient plants and animals
  • Gasoline What most car engines burn
  • Generator Spinning machine at a power plant, or a backup engine that hums when the lights go out
  • Geothermal Describes heat that comes from deep inside the planet
  • Grid Web of power lines, towers and substations linking plants to homes
  • Hydropower Electricity from water rushing downhill through spinning wheels
  • Insulate Wrap a house so that heat stays in
  • Oil Crude black liquid that drilling rigs bring up from far below the seabed
  • Outlet Place in a wall with two or three slots for a cord's prongs
  • Panel Flat rooftop sheet of cells that soak up daylight
  • Renewable Describes a source that nature keeps refilling
  • Solar Kind of power that comes from sunshine
  • Sunlight Brightness that pours through a window on a clear morning
  • Tidal Kind of power drawn from seawater flowing in and out of a bay
  • Turbine Tower-top machine with three long blades that a breeze keeps turning
  • Unplug Take a cord's prongs out of the socket
  • Watt Unit of power on an appliance label, abbreviated W
  • Wind Moving air that turns giant blades

Climate and Global Warming 24

  • Arctic Far-northern region of sea ice, home of walruses and white bears
  • Atmosphere Mostly nitrogen, this layer of air wraps the whole planet
  • Carbon ___ dioxide: heat-trapping gas written CO2
  • Celsius Temperature scale on which ice forms at zero
  • Climate Tropical, dry, mild or frozen: a place's long-run pattern of heat and rain
  • Degree One step on a thermometer
  • Drought Dry spell so long that crops wither and lawns turn brown
  • Emissions Gases sent into the air by engines and smokestacks
  • Exhaust Fumes from a tailpipe
  • Flood Too much rain can cause one
  • Footprint Mark left by a shoe; also a measure of the heat-trapping gases an activity adds
  • Glacier Frozen giant that grinds slowly down a mountain and carves a U-shaped valley
  • Globe Spinning classroom sphere with the continents printed on it
  • Greenhouse ___ gas: one that traps heat near the ground
  • Iceberg Huge floating chunk of freshwater ice in the sea
  • Melt What ice does when it gets warm
  • Methane Swamp gas, written CH4, that cows also burp up
  • Ozone Gas with three atoms per molecule; a layer of it high up screens out ultraviolet rays
  • Permafrost Underground layer in Alaska and Siberia that stays frozen all year
  • Polar Describes the icy regions around both ends of the world
  • Pollution Dirty smoke in the sky or chemicals dumped in a creek
  • Smog Brown haze that hangs over a big city on a hot, still day
  • Soot Black powder left by smoke
  • Warming Global ___: the slow rise in the planet's average temperature

Habitats and Wildlife 28

  • Biome Major kind of natural region, such as grassland or taiga
  • Bison Shaggy grazer of the plains, the United States' national mammal
  • Desert Sahara or Mojave, for example
  • Ecosystem Community of living things and the place they share, from one rotting log to a whole valley
  • Endangered Label for a creature whose numbers have fallen dangerously low
  • Extinct Gone forever, like the dodo
  • Habitat The kind of place a creature needs to live: a cave for a bat, a tide pool for a crab
  • Manatee Slow, gentle plant-eater of warm coasts, nicknamed the sea cow
  • Meadow Open field of grass and blossoms
  • Migrate Make a long seasonal journey, as caribou herds and whales do
  • Monarch Royal-named butterfly whose eastern swarms spend the cold months on Mexican fir trees
  • Orangutan Long-armed orange ape of Southeast Asian treetops; its name means person of the forest
  • Otter Furry swimmer; the sea kind cracks shellfish open with a rock
  • Panda Black and white bear of China's mountain forests
  • Pollinator Bee, bat or hummingbird visiting blossom after blossom, dusted in yellow grains
  • Prairie Wide, flat grassland of central North America
  • Preserve Land kept wild on purpose
  • Protect Guard a nesting beach or an old forest from damage
  • Rainforest Jungle such as the Amazon, dripping wet and green all year
  • Reef Colorful undersea ridge that corals build over centuries, such as Australia's Great Barrier
  • Rhino Thick-skinned giant with a horn on its nose
  • Sanctuary Home where rescued elephants or chimpanzees live out their days in peace
  • Species Scientists count each kind of beetle as a separate one
  • Tiger Big orange cat with dark stripes, found from India to the Russian Far East
  • Tundra Windswept far-north land of lichens and reindeer, too cold for forests
  • Wetland Soggy ground of cattails and herons, part land and part shallow pool
  • Wildlife Deer, foxes, hawks and every other untamed creature
  • Wolf Pack hunter brought back to Yellowstone in 1995

Water 28

  • Aquifer Water-soaked layer of sand or gravel far below a farm, tapped by pumps
  • Barrel Rain ___: tub that catches what pours off a roof
  • Cycle Water ___: the endless trip from sea to sky to land and back
  • Dew Tiny drops on grass at dawn
  • Drip One drop falling from a leaky tap
  • Droplet Tiny bead of water
  • Faucet Sink fixture that a handle turns on and off
  • Filter It strains dirt out of a liquid
  • Gallon Milk-jug size: sixteen cups
  • Groundwater Rain that soaked in long ago and now sits far beneath your feet
  • Irrigate Supply a dry field with moisture through canals, pipes or sprayers
  • Kelp Leathery brown alga that towers from the seafloor like a forest
  • Lake Superior, Tahoe or Victoria
  • Leak A cracked pipe under the sink has one, and a puddle shows it
  • Ocean Pacific or Atlantic, for example
  • Plankton Tiny drifting life at the bottom of the sea's food web
  • Pond Lily pads float on this quiet pool; frogs croak beside it
  • Purify Make clean enough to drink
  • Reservoir Human-made basin that stores a city's drinking supply
  • River The Amazon, the Nile or the Mississippi
  • Runoff Stormwater that rushes down streets and gutters, carrying dirt along
  • Sewer Underground pipe that carries away what goes down the drain
  • Shower Bathroom spray; also a short rain
  • Spill Accidental pouring out of a liquid
  • Stream Small flowing waterway you could wade across
  • Vapor Invisible gas that a drying puddle turns into
  • Watershed All the land whose rain drains to the same place
  • Well Shaft drilled down to underground water, with a pump or a bucket on a rope

Trees and Plants 28

  • Acorn Small smooth nut wearing a scaly cap
  • Arbor Word before Day in the name of a tree holiday begun in Nebraska in 1872
  • Bamboo Fast-growing giant grass with hollow woody stems
  • Bark A tree's rough coat; on a birch it peels in papery strips
  • Cactus Saguaro or prickly pear
  • Canopy Leafy roof of a forest
  • Erosion Slow wearing away of bare ground
  • Evergreen Pine, spruce or fir, never bare in January
  • Fern Its fronds uncurl from tight spirals called fiddleheads
  • Mangrove Coastal tree that stands on stilt-like roots in salt water
  • Milkweed The only plant that a certain orange butterfly's caterpillars eat
  • Moss Velvety green cushion on a shady rock, with no flowers or seeds
  • Mulch Layer of wood chips spread to keep the ground moist
  • Native Describes a plant that has always grown in a place
  • Oak Tree that drops capped nuts
  • Organic Describes farming without human-made pesticides
  • Oxygen Gas making up about a fifth of the air, released by leaves in daylight
  • Redwood Coastal California giant that can top 350 feet
  • Sapling Young tree
  • Seedling Sprout with its first two tiny leaves, days after a seed splits open
  • Sequoia Sierra Nevada giant; one named General Sherman is the largest tree by volume
  • Shrub Woody bush
  • Stump Flat-topped seat in the woods where a chainsaw did its work
  • Timber Logs headed for the sawmill; also a lumberjack's warning shout
  • Topsoil Dark, rich upper layer of ground
  • Trunk Woody main stem that adds a new ring each year
  • Wildflower Bloom that grows without being planted
  • Willow Tree whose long branches droop toward the ground

How this list was compiled: Clues written for this site for elementary classes: reduce, reuse and recycle, renewable energy, climate and global warming, habitats and wildlife, water, and trees and plants. Every answer is an entry in Wiktionary (en.wiktionary.org), and each science or nature fact was checked against English Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org, CC BY-SA 4.0) in October 2026. Clues name things and say what they are. No clue was copied from a published puzzle. Licence: own work

How it works

This Earth Day crossword puzzle is a printable vocabulary crossword for April 22, and an environment crossword puzzle, printable for any science week: recycling, renewable energy, climate, habitats, water and trees.

Read the full guide

Six sets and a short one

Short Earth Day Words keeps answers to 5 letters or fewer: Bin, Oak, Reef, Solar. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle has Compost, Landfill and Upcycle. Renewable Energy has Turbine, Geothermal and Insulate. Climate and Global Warming has Methane, Permafrost and Emissions. Habitats and Wildlife has Wetland, Manatee and Pollinator. Water has Aquifer, Runoff and Watershed. Trees and Plants has Sapling, Mangrove and Milkweed.

What the climate clues say

They name things and say what they are: the gases that trap heat, permafrost, a carbon footprint. No clue gives advice.

  • For a recycling crossword puzzle, printable alone, choose Reduce, Reuse, Recycle under Clue set, then Print.

Questions and answers

When is Earth Day?

Earth Day is April 22 every year. It was first held in 1970, on April 22.

Is there a global warming crossword puzzle, printable on its own?

Yes. Choose Climate and Global Warming under Clue set and each new puzzle draws only from that set: Greenhouse, Methane, Glacier, Permafrost and more.

How do I print only the renewable energy crossword puzzle?

Choose Renewable Energy under Clue set, then Print. The set runs from Solar, Dam and Watt to Geothermal and Hydropower, and the answer key prints last.

What grade is the Earth Day crossword for?

Short Earth Day Words suits about grades 2 and 3, with a word bank under the clues. The six themed sets suit grades 3 to 6, where answers such as Permafrost and Pollinator appear. These bands are our judgment, not a published standard.

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