Earth Day Word Search Free to Print, From Recycling to Clean Energy

Print an Earth Day word search for April 22, or save the paper and solve it on the board.

Name Date

Earth Day Word Search

Find every word hidden in the grid. Words go across and down.

0 of 16 words found

IETHZOUIMYSEHAE

LGHEGHLRLNEWJRM

RRBOAAGBCGFLMVA

YEQEPLANETOINWD

UNYRUQRNKNRTPZR

LEDATQDSORETNOQ

RREDUCEQNESEMAI

OGTTAANBACTRRKI

HYCOMPOSTYDROSN

OOGWSRIAUCDIBRS

AEPCHIIDRLWEXOR

RALCRLIREESCSDA

ORAWIPBHLEBEETF

VTNPINSRRDTREEA

SHTRASHNJYRXDHS

This grid is wider and taller than its box. Slide it to see every letter.To drag, hold the first letter for a moment, then slide.Keyboard: Tab to the grid, arrow keys to move, Enter on the first and last letter.

RecycleRECYCLE
ReduceREDUCE
CompostCOMPOST
TrashTRASH
LitterLITTER
EarthEARTH
PlanetPLANET
ForestFOREST
NatureNATURE
EnergyENERGY
TreeTREE
SeedSEED
PlantPLANT
GardenGARDEN
BeeBEE
AprilAPRIL

16 of 24 words from the Earth Day Favorites list.

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Word list

Large print Lower-case letters Name and date line on paper

The puzzle changes as you go. See the puzzle

Answer key: Earth Day Word Search

IETHZOUIMYSEHAE

LGHEGHLRLNEWJRM

RRBOAAGBCGFLMVA

YEQEPLANETOINWD

UNYRUQRNKNRTPZR

LEDATQDSORETNOQ

RREDUCEQNESEMAI

OGTTAANBACTRRKI

HYCOMPOSTYDROSN

OOGWSRIAUCDIBRS

AEPCHIIDRLWEXOR

RALCRLIREESCSDA

ORAWIPBHLEBEETF

VTNPINSRRDTREEA

SHTRASHNJYRXDHS

RECYCLE, REDUCE, COMPOST, TRASH, LITTER, EARTH, PLANET, FOREST, NATURE, ENERGY, TREE, SEED, PLANT, GARDEN, BEE, APRIL

Next step Build a puzzle from your own town's park and river Play Earth Day bingo with the word list

All 100 words

Reduce Reuse Recycle 22

Aluminum Soda cans are made of it. Recycling it takes only about 5 percent of the energy of making it new from ore.
Bin A box for trash or recycling. Many classrooms keep a separate one just for paper.
Bottle It holds a drink. A refillable one saves buying a new one every day.
Cans Metal holders for drinks and food. Rinse them before they go out for recycling.
Cardboard Thick, stiff paper used for boxes. Flatten it before it goes out for collection.
Compost Food scraps and dead leaves left to rot into dark, crumbly food for garden soil.
Donate To give away clothes, books or toys you have outgrown so that someone else gets to use them.
Glass Bottles and jars made of it are infinitely recyclable: melted down and shaped again and again.
Landfill A place where a town's trash is buried under layers of soil.
Litter Wrappers, bottles and other rubbish dropped on the ground where they do not belong.
Metal Steel and aluminum are two kinds. Both are melted down to make new things.
Paper Made from wood pulp. Writing on both sides of a sheet saves trees.

Show all 100 words (88 more)

Reduce Reuse Recycle, continued

Plastic A light material made mostly from oil. A bag or bottle made of it can drift in the sea for years.
Recycle To turn used things into new ones so that less goes in the trash. The third of the three Rs.
Reduce To use less of something. It comes first of the three Rs because it saves the most.
Repair To fix something broken so that it does not have to be thrown away.
Reusable Made to last through many uses, like a cloth shopping bag or a lunch tin.
Reuse To put a thing to work a second time, like a jam jar that now holds pencils.
Secondhand Owned by someone else before you. Buying clothes this way keeps them out of the trash.
Sort To put things into groups: paper here, glass there, apple cores in the compost.
Trash Things thrown away. The less of it a class makes, the better.
Waste What is left over and thrown out. As a verb, to use more than you need.

Planet Earth 20

Air The mix of gases we breathe: about 78 percent nitrogen and 21 percent oxygen.
Atmosphere The blanket of gases wrapped around our world. It holds the air we breathe.
Climate The usual weather of a place, measured over many years.
Earth Our home, third planet out from the Sun, and the one place known to have life.
Ecosystem All the living things in one place, together with the water, soil and air they share.
Environment Everything around a living thing: the air, the water, the land and the other life in it.
Forest A large area covered with trees. It shelters animals and cleans the air.
Glacier A huge, slow-moving body of ice. With the polar ice sheets, these hold about 69 percent of the world's fresh water.
Globe A model of our world, shaped like a ball and tilted on a stand.
Land The solid part of the world's surface, about 29 percent of it.
Marble The Apollo 17 crew's photo of the whole Earth is named The Blue this, after a small glass ball.
Nature Everything that was not made by people: plants, animals, rocks, rivers and weather.
Ocean Salt water that covers about 71 percent of our world's surface.
Oxygen The gas we breathe in. Tiny drifting sea plants called phytoplankton make at least half of it.
Ozone A gas high above us. A layer of it soaks up most of the Sun's harmful ultraviolet rays.
Pacific The largest and deepest ocean. It is bigger than all of the land on the globe put together.
Planet A large round world that travels around a star. Ours took shape some 4.5 billion years ago.
River Fresh water flowing across the land toward a lake or the sea.
Soil The top layer of the ground, where plants grow. It is made of bits of rock and rotted leaves.
Water Every living thing needs it. Turning off the tap while you brush your teeth saves some.

Clean Energy 21

Battery It stores electricity. A rechargeable one is filled and used again and again.
Bicycle Two wheels and no engine. Riding one to school burns no fuel at all.
Carbon The C in CO2, the gas given off when coal, gasoline or natural gas burns.
Carpool Sharing one ride with friends or neighbors so that fewer vehicles are on the road.
Energy What makes lights glow, cars move and machines run. Using less of it is a big part of Earth Day.
Fossil Coal and natural gas are fuels of this kind, formed from living things buried for millions of years.
Fuel Anything burned for heat or power, such as gasoline, coal or wood.
Geothermal Heat from deep underground, used to warm buildings and to make electricity.
Greenhouse Gases of this kind, such as CO2, trap the Sun's heat around our world like glass walls around seedlings.
Lights Turn them off when a room is empty. LED bulbs need far less electricity than older bulbs.
Panel A flat board of solar cells, often fixed to a roof, that makes electricity from daylight.
Pollution Harmful stuff added to air, water or land, such as smoke, spilled oil or trash.
Power Electricity, in everyday talk. Clean kinds come from the Sun, moving air and flowing water.
Renewable Never running out. Sunshine, moving air and flowing water are sources of this kind.
Smog Dirty, hazy air over a city. The word was made by joining smoke and fog.
Solar Coming from the Sun. Roof panels of this kind turn daylight into electricity.
Sun The star our world travels around. Its light is the source of solar power.
Thermostat The dial or screen that sets the heating. One degree lower in winter burns less fuel.
Turbine A machine with blades that spin in moving air or water to make electricity.
Unplug To pull a charger out of the wall. Many devices go on drawing electricity while switched off.
Wind Moving air. It spins the blades of a turbine to make electricity.

Plants and Wildlife 23

Bee A buzzing insect that carries pollen from bloom to bloom. Much of our fruit depends on its work.
Butterfly An insect with four bright wings that begins life as a caterpillar.
Coral Tiny sea animals called polyps build reefs of it. The largest reef system lies off Queensland, Australia.
Endangered At risk of dying out. Five of the seven kinds of sea turtle are listed as threatened with extinction.
Extinct Gone for good: not one living member of that kind of animal or plant is left.
Frog It starts life as a tadpole and needs clean ponds and wetlands to live in.
Garden A plot for growing flowers or vegetables. A school one can be fed with the class's own compost.
Habitat The natural home of a plant or animal, such as a pond, a forest or a desert.
Hummingbird A tiny bird that hovers at blooms to sip nectar through its long beak, moving pollen as it goes.
Leaf The flat green part on a stem, where sunlight is turned into food.
Plant A living thing that makes its own food from sunlight. Setting one in the ground is a classic Earth Day job.
Pollinator An animal, such as a bee, a bat or a moth, that moves pollen from flower to flower so seeds can form.
Rainforest A thick, wet jungle. The Amazon in South America is the largest tropical one in the world.
Reef A ridge of coral in warm, shallow sea. Australia's largest stretches over 2,300 kilometers.
Roots The underground parts of a tree or flower. They drink up water and hold the soil in place.
Seed A new plant begins as one. Push it into soil, water it and wait.
Species One kind of living thing. The Amazon alone holds about 16,000 kinds of trees.
Tree A tall plant with a trunk. About a million were planted in Nebraska on April 10, 1872, the first Arbor Day.
Turtle Sea ones sometimes swallow plastic bags, which look like the jellyfish they eat.
Wetland Ground soaked with water, such as a marsh or a swamp. It filters water and shelters birds.
Whale A giant of the sea that comes up to breathe air as we do. The blue kind is the largest animal alive.
Wildlife Animals that live on their own in nature, not as pets or on farms.
Worm It tunnels through the soil and turns dead leaves into food for plants.

Earth Day Action 14

April Earth Day comes on the 22nd of this month every year.
Cleanup A day when helpers pick up litter from a park, a beach or the schoolyard.
Conservation Looking after nature and using its gifts with care so that they last.
Footprint The mark a shoe leaves, and a word for the amount of CO2 a person's choices give off.
Green The color of leaves, and a word for choices that are kind to the environment.
Paris The city that gave its name to the climate agreement signed on Earth Day in 2016.
Pledge A promise. An Earth Day one might be to walk to school or to carry a refillable bottle.
Protect To keep safe from harm. Parks and reserves do this for wild places.
Rally A crowd gathered for a cause. About 20 million Americans joined events like it on April 22, 1970.
Save To keep from being wasted or lost, as with water, electricity or a wild place.
Spill Oil leaking into the sea. One off Santa Barbara, California, in 1969 helped to inspire Earth Day.
Sustainable Able to carry on for a long time without using up what people will need later.
Volunteer Someone who helps without being paid, as at a park or river tidy-up day.
Wisconsin The home state of Gaylord Nelson, the senator who proposed the first Earth Day.

How this list was compiled: 100 Earth Day words chosen and defined for this site, in five themed lists (reduce, reuse, recycle; planet Earth; clean energy; plants and wildlife; Earth Day action) plus three cross-cutting lists: 24 favorites that open the page, the 42 short words of 3 to 5 letters and the 24 long words of 8 to 12 letters. Every entry is a single word of 3 to 12 letters with no spaces, hyphens or apostrophes. No clue contains its own word, because the clue replaces the word in clue mode. No brand, team, character or product name is included, and the only person named in a clue is Gaylord Nelson (1916 to 2005), the senator who proposed the first Earth Day. Definitions are our own wording for readers of about 7 to 12. Facts with a date, a place or a number in them were checked on 2026-09-19 against these English Wikipedia articles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Day (April 22 every year; first held April 22, 1970; proposed as a national teach-in by Wisconsin senator Gaylord Nelson; about 20 million Americans are estimated to have joined in; the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill helped to inspire it; 141 countries in 1990; the Paris Agreement was signed on Earth Day 2016; events now reach about a billion people across over 193 countries; the unofficial Earth flag carries The Blue Marble, a photograph the Apollo 17 crew took), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth (the third planet out from the Sun, and the one object known to harbor life; took shape some 4.5 billion years ago; ocean covers 70.8 percent of the surface and land 29.2 percent; dry air is 78.08 percent nitrogen and 20.95 percent oxygen), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Ocean (largest and deepest ocean, larger than all land combined), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_rainforest (largest tract of tropical rainforest; about 16,000 tree species), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacier (glaciers and ice sheets hold about 69 percent of the world's fresh water), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_layer (soaks up most ultraviolet radiation from the Sun), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytoplankton (at least half of oxygen production), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_recycling (recycling takes about 5 percent of the energy of making aluminium from ore), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_recycling (bottles and jars of glass can be recycled without end), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel (coal, oil and natural gas formed from buried organisms over millions of years and release CO2 when burned), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smog (a blend of smoke and fog), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbor_Day (an estimated one million trees planted in Nebraska on April 10, 1872), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollinator (bees, bats, moths and birds move pollen between flowers), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_whale (the biggest animal ever known to have lived), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_turtle (seven species, five listed as threatened with extinction; plastic bags are mistaken for jellyfish) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Barrier_Reef (largest coral reef system, built by coral polyps, over 2,300 kilometres long, off Queensland, Australia). The one-word spellings Cleanup and Secondhand were checked on Wiktionary the same day. Licence: own work

How it works

An Earth Day word search free to print or solve on screen. Recycle, Compost and Forest are among its first 16 words. New puzzle pulls a different 16 from the 24 Earth Day Favorites, one of 8 lists.

Read the full guide

Lists that follow a science unit

Five choices in Start from a list follow a science unit: Reduce Reuse Recycle, Planet Earth, Clean Energy, Plants and Wildlife, and Earth Day Action, which puts all 14 of its words in one puzzle. For reading level, Easy Earth Day has the 42 words of 3 to 5 letters, such as Bee, Seed and Solar. Hard Earth Day has 24 of 8 to 12.

On paper, or with no paper at all

As an Earth Day word search printable it is 2 pages: the puzzle under a Name and Date line, then the answer key. Copy page 1 for the class and page 2 once. On a board, the Earth Day word search puzzle needs no paper: pupils tap a word's two ends or drag across it.

Word study: the Smog clue says the word was made by joining smoke and fog.
Before a cleanup, have each pupil circle one Reduce Reuse Recycle word, Repair or Donate, to write a pledge around.
For fourth and fifth grade, choose Hard Earth Day and press Hard: Atmosphere and Pollinator may then read backwards.

Questions and answers

Is there an Earth Day word search PDF?

Yes. Press Print or save as PDF and choose Save as PDF in the print dialog: the file holds both pages, the puzzle and then its answer key. Save a fresh file after each New puzzle for a different grid per table group.

When was the first Earth Day?

April 22, 1970. Gaylord Nelson, a senator from Wisconsin, proposed it as a national teach-in, and an estimated 20 million Americans took part. Wisconsin is one of the 14 words in Earth Day Action.

What do reduce, reuse and recycle mean?

Reduce means use less, reuse means put a thing to work a second time, and recycle means turn used things into new ones. Reduce comes first because it saves the most. Recycling aluminum takes about 5 percent of the energy of making it new.

All 100 words

Reduce Reuse Recycle 22

Reduce Reuse Recycle, continued

Planet Earth 20

Clean Energy 21

Plants and Wildlife 23

Earth Day Action 14

How it works

Lists that follow a science unit

On paper, or with no paper at all

Questions and answers

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