Scavenger Hunt

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Earth Day Scavenger Hunt List

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Here’s a free Earth Day scavenger hunt list you can use if you’re looking for fun ideas and activities to do on April 22.

This will have a positive impact on nature in your local community while being a fun, competitive activity.

There’s also a free printable copy of the list that you can use – see below for the link to download it.

Earth Day Scavenger Hunt List

Players

This Earth Day activity can be done with any type of group:

  • Adults
  • Your kids and their friends
  • Youth group
  • School class

It can also be played with any number of people, but more players is better as it means more trash is picked up and therefore more recycling can be done.

Resources

  • Scavenger hunt list (see below)
  • Pens
  • Trash bags (at least two per team)
  • Protective gloves

Idea

Split the group into teams and provide them with the resources listed above.

Their task is to hunt for all the items of trash in the list below and pick them up. This will help make their neighborhood or community a cleaner, greener, more eco-friendly place for Earth Day.

As people will be working together, this is also a great team building scavenger hunt.

Safety

If you’re organizing this activity with kids or youth, warn them about picking up broken glass and to be careful of other sharp objects (e.g. needles).

It’s also a good idea to have at least one adult supervising each team of young people. It may not be necessary for older teens, but can still be a great opportunity to do some relationship building.

Points

Ultimately, the aim of this Earth Day scavenger hunt is to clear up discarded trash and improve nature in your neighborhood. To make it more fun though, the teams will be competing against each other to see who can score the most points.

Award 1 point for each item found, with 3 bonus points for each completed section. Award 0.25 points for each additional item once a section has been completed.

For example, one of the items on the list is to pick up five plastic bags. If a team found 7 plastic bags, they’d earn 8.5 points:

5 x 1 point for the initial 5 bags listed = 5
3 points for completing the section = 3
2 x 0.25 points for the additional bags = 0.5
Total = 8.5

Tip

To make recycling easier, have teams put recyclable items in one trash bag and non-recyclable items in a separate bag.

List

Here’s the Earth Day scavenger hunt list for you to use. There’s also a link below to a free printable copy of the list – there are two copies of the list per page, reducing the amount of paper you need to print off.

  • 10 cans
  • 10 plastic bottles
  • 10 bottle caps
  • 10 candy wrappers
  • 10 cigarette butts
  • 5 glass bottles
  • 5 plastic bags
  • 5 sheets of paper
  • 5 fast food bags
  • 5 potato chip bags
  • 5 soda cups from fast food restaurants
  • 5 receipts
  • 4 empty cigarette packets
  • 3 cardboard sleeves for fries
  • 3 batteries
  • 2 pizza boxes
  • 1 Pringles tube
  • 1 item of clothing
  • 1 electronic item
  • 1 car tire

Printable Earth Day Scavenger Hunt List

If you liked this idea, check out all of our other free scavenger hunt lists.