• 60 prompts
  • Checked October 2026

Writing Prompts About the Environment

A litter pick, a jar on its ninth life, a letter to the town council, a warmer world.

Writing Prompts About the Environment

Show all 60
  1. Write an opinion: what is one thing a school could do about climate change?Angle: pick something small enough to start on Monday.
  2. Your class spends an hour picking up litter in a park. Write the hour, bag by bag.Angle: what was there the most of, and what was the one thing nobody expected?
  3. Write a park bench's memory of the days when it was plastic bottles.Fact: recovered plastic is used to make new things such as carpeting and park benches.

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All 60 prompts

A litter pick 15

  • A creek sends a thank-you note to the people who cleaned the litter out of it. Write the note. First line: I can hear myself again.
  • A kid picks up one piece of litter every morning before school. Write day one and day one hundred. Angle: what changed on the street, and what changed in the kid?
  • After the litter pick, the team weighs the bags. Write the report for the school newspaper. Angle: the number, the oddest find, one quote from the youngest picker.
  • Describe a beach before and after a cleanup, using the same five places both times. Angle: the tide line, the rocks, the path, the bench, the trash can.
  • Describe the sound, the smell and the feel of a litter pick on a cold morning. Angle: gloves, the rattle of cans in a bag, wet leaves stuck to everything.
  • Sort one bag of litter into piles and write what each pile tells you about the people who walk here. Angle: be a detective. Wrappers mean snacks. What do the bottle caps mean?
  • Turn picking up litter into a game and write the rules. Angle: how do you score? What is worth double?
  • Two friends argue during a cleanup about whether one hour of picking up litter makes any difference. Write it. First line: "It will all be back by Friday." "Then so will we."
  • Write a litter pick from the point of view of the grabber tool. First line: I have picked up four hundred things today and been thanked for none of them.
  • Write about a place you know that never has any litter, and work out why. Angle: is it the trash cans, the people, a rule, or someone you have never noticed?
  • Write an argument: who should pick up litter, the person who dropped it or whoever sees it? Angle: give the other side its best reason before you answer it.
  • Write the diary of a park trash can for one busy Saturday. Angle: who misses, who does not try, who walks back to pick it up?
  • Write the poster for a Saturday creek cleanup: when, where, what to bring, and one reason to come. Angle: the reason is the hard part. Make it one sentence.
  • Write the strangest thing you could find on a litter pick, and the story of how it got there. First line: Nobody loses a single roller skate on purpose.
  • Your class spends an hour picking up litter in a park. Write the hour, bag by bag. Angle: what was there the most of, and what was the one thing nobody expected?

A thing saved from the trash 15

  • A glass jar tells its life story, and this is its ninth life. Fact: glass food and drink containers can be recycled over and over again.
  • A road tells the story of the glass bottles inside it. Fact: recovered glass is used in asphalt to pave roads.
  • Explain what recycling is to someone who has never heard of it. Fact: recycling collects and processes things that would be thrown away and turns them into new products.
  • Give a tour of a recycling plant as the guide who loves the job. Fact: at a recovery facility, recyclables are sorted, cleaned and processed into materials for making things.
  • Reduce, reuse or recycle: pick the one you think matters most and argue for it. Fact: the EPA ranks reducing and reusing ahead of recycling.
  • Ten plastic bottles get a second chance. Write what they power. Fact: recycling 10 plastic bottles saves enough energy to power a laptop for more than 25 hours.
  • Wrap a present without buying wrapping paper. Write what you used and how the person reacted. Fact: the EPA calls newspaper an excellent alternative to gift wrap.
  • Write a park bench's memory of the days when it was plastic bottles. Fact: recovered plastic is used to make new things such as carpeting and park benches.
  • Write a recycling rule for your home as a sign for the kitchen wall, then explain it. Fact: what a recycling program accepts differs from place to place, so the EPA says to check locally.
  • Write about something you saved from the trash and what you turned it into. Angle: what it was, what it is now, and the moment you saw what it could be.
  • Write an opinion: should every classroom have its own recycling bin? Angle: who would empty it, and what would end up in the wrong bin?
  • Write the argument between a pizza box and a recycling bin about whether the box is allowed in. Fact: the EPA says pizza boxes can be recycled once the food scraps are out; local rules may differ.
  • Write the diary of a cardboard box that is reused five times before it is recycled. Angle: a delivery, a fort, a moving day, a cat's bed, a costume. Then the bin.
  • Write the journey of an empty bottle from the recycling bin to the thing it becomes. Fact: recycling is a loop of three steps: collecting and processing, making new products, and buying them.
  • Write the story of a book that was nearly thrown out and was given away instead. Fact: the EPA suggests donating a book that is still in good condition before recycling it.

A letter to the town council 15

  • Ask the town council for a bike rack outside the library, so that fewer people need to drive there. Angle: say where the bikes are leaned now.
  • Ask the town council for a water bottle filling station at the playground. Angle: say what people drink from now, and where the empty bottles end up.
  • Ask the town council to compost the leaves the town collects each fall. Fact: the EPA says yard trimmings cannot be recycled, but they can be composted.
  • Ask the town council to turn an empty patch of ground into a garden for bees and butterflies. Angle: who would plant it, who would water it, and what the sign would say.
  • The oldest tree in town sends a letter to the town council. Write it. First line: I was here before the road, and I have a few requests.
  • Write a letter asking the town council to switch off some lights at night so people can see the stars. Angle: which lights could go dark, and which must stay on?
  • Write a letter thanking the town council for something green your town already has. Angle: a thank-you gets read. Say what it is, who uses it, and what would be missed.
  • Write a letter to the town council asking for recycling bins beside the trash cans in the park. Angle: say what you saw in the trash can that did not belong there.
  • Write a letter to the town council from a class that wants to look after one stretch of roadside. Angle: what the class promises, and the one thing it needs from the town.
  • Write a three-sentence letter to the town council about litter. Make every sentence earn its place. Angle: the problem, the place, the one thing you are asking for.
  • Write the speech a kid gives at a town council meeting about the environment, with two minutes at the microphone. First line: My name is not important. The pond behind the school is.
  • Write the town council's reply to a kid who asked for one car-free street, one Sunday a month. Angle: a polite letter with one yes, one no and one question.
  • Write to the town council about a creek, a pond or a ditch that needs looking after. Angle: describe it on a good day and on a bad day.
  • Write to the town council asking for a place to take old batteries and broken electronics. Fact: the EPA says most batteries should not go in household trash or recycling bins.
  • Write to the town council asking for more trees on one street you know. Give three reasons. First line: On the sunny side of the street there is no shade from the corner to the bridge.

A warmer world 15

  • A dry summer ends with the first rain. Write the poem. Fact: NASA says changes in rainfall have made droughts and floods more intense.
  • A town by the sea plans for higher water. Write the meeting. Fact: melting ice sheets and glaciers and a warming ocean have raised the sea level along coasts.
  • Explain the difference between weather and climate to a younger kid, using your own town. Fact: weather is what it is like outside right now; climate is the weather a region can expect.
  • Imagine the last ice age and write a morning in a place that is now a city. Fact: 20,000 years ago, in the last ice age, glaciers covered much of the United States.
  • List five things your family does that burn fuel, then write about doing one of them differently for a week. Fact: burning fuel to power factories, cars and buses adds to the gases that trap heat.
  • Two photographs of the same glacier are taken many years apart. Write what the second photographer sees. Fact: photographs of one Alaskan glacier taken in 1941 and in 2004 show how far the ice retreated.
  • Write a diary entry for a scientist drilling an ice core in Antarctica. Fact: bubbles of old air in each layer of an ice core show what the air held in that year.
  • Write a global warming story set in your own town fifty years from now, with one thing better and one thing harder. Fact: Earth's air has warmed, on average, more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit in the past 100 years.
  • Write a hopeful news story from the future with the headline: The Air Is Getting Cleaner. Fact: plants, soil and oceans take some carbon dioxide out of the air.
  • Write a thank-you letter to a tree for the work it does on the air. Fact: all plants, from tall trees to blades of grass, take in carbon dioxide and give off oxygen.
  • Write an opinion: what is one thing a school could do about climate change? Angle: pick something small enough to start on Monday.
  • Write climate change as a kid explaining it to a grandparent who remembers colder winters. Fact: climate change is a change in average conditions, such as temperature and rainfall, over a long time.
  • Write the view from a satellite that has watched Earth warm for twenty years. Fact: NASA's satellites collect information about Earth's air, water and land to see how it changes.
  • Write the weather report for the hottest week your town has ever had. Fact: NASA says warmer temperatures have made heat waves more intense and more common.
  • Write what the greenhouse effect is, starting inside a real greenhouse full of tomato plants. Fact: gases in the air trap some of the sun's heat, as the glass of a greenhouse keeps plants warm.

How it works

These writing prompts about the environment start with what a kid can see: a creek after a cleanup, a pizza box at the recycling bin, the hottest week a town has had. The facts are the EPA's and NASA's.

Read the full guide

Recycling writing prompts

Fifteen prompts follow a thing that was saved from the trash. A park bench remembers being plastic bottles, a road tells of the glass inside it, and a cardboard box is a fort, a cat's bed and a costume before it is recycled. Twelve carry a fact from the Environmental Protection Agency's recycling pages.

Climate change writing prompts

The group A warmer world explains before it imagines: the greenhouse effect told from inside a real greenhouse, an ice core, two photographs of one glacier, a morning in the last ice age. The facts under them are from NASA's pages for children.

  • A letter to a council asks for one thing. Name the place first, then the thing.
  • Keep a warmer world small: one street, one summer, one person.

Questions and answers

What is a good recycling writing prompt?

One that gives the object a voice or a second job. Ten plastic bottles get a second chance, and you write what they power. Or a pizza box argues with a recycling bin about whether it is allowed in.

Is there a global warming writing prompt?

Several. The writing prompts about global warming include a story set in your own town fifty years from now, with one thing better and one thing harder, and a weather report for the hottest week the town has ever had.

What is the difference between weather and climate?

Weather is what it is like outside right now in one place. Climate is the weather a region can expect, worked out from many years of records. That is how NASA puts it, and one prompt asks you to explain it to a younger kid.

Are these environment writing prompts for kids?

Yes. The litter is on a beach or in a park, and the letters ask a town council for a bike rack or a garden for bees. The opinion prompts ask for the writer's own view and a reason for it.

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