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Ellis Abel Learns.

In my own words · Rapid City, SD

Why I love recycling

A worker checks a replacement distillation assembly for the space station's water recycling system in a processing facility. Real NASA photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Recycling" page — read by families in Rapid City, SD.
A worker checks a replacement distillation assembly for the space station's water recycling system in a processing facility. NASA · Public domain
  • The stuff does not go away, it goes somewhere.
  • Some things can become the same thing again.
  • Sorting it right is the whole job.

You can love recycling in Rapid City.

What it really is

Recycling recovers material so it can be made into something again.

Three things to try today

  1. Sort one day of trash into piles.
  2. Weigh the biggest pile.
  3. Find out where that pile goes.
A worker checks a replacement distillation assembly for the space station's water recycling system in a processing facility. Real NASA photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Recycling" page — read by families in Rapid City, SD.
A worker checks a replacement distillation assembly for the space station's water recycling system in a processing facility. NASA · Public domain

For the grown-up reading this

The Rapid City, SD metro area has about 156,934 residents, ranking 280th in the country. The question is not whether Rapid City, SD has children who love recycling. It is whether anyone told them that counts as something.

Weighing it makes it real. Most families are surprised by which pile is heaviest.

If the kid who loves this is a girl

Read what one popular teacher said to one little girl who took out the classroom trash without being asked — and what that girl did with the rest of her life.

Girls are great at math — Rapid City, SD →

Love something else too

An aerial photograph of the Vehicle Assembly Building under construction at Kennedy Space Center, its steel frame still open to the sky. Real NASA photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Building" page — read by families in Rapid City, SD.Why I love buildingAn aerial view of construction crews and barges working to complete the westbound span of the Indian River causeway bridge. Real NASA photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Bridges" page — read by families in Rapid City, SD.Why I love bridgesThe four-wheeled Artemis Jr. prototype rover, topped with a solar array, driving across a grass field beside the Operations and Checkout Building. Real NASA photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Cars" page — read by families in Rapid City, SD.Why I love carsA humpback whale launching most of its body out of the ocean in a breach, with spray flying off its flippers. Real USGS photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Whales" page — read by families in Rapid City, SD.Why I love whalesA bee crawling over the yellow centre of a wildflower while pollinating it on Kennedy Space Center property. Real NASA photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Insects" page — read by families in Rapid City, SD.Why I love bugsA scientist looks through a microscope at human breast cancer cells in a cell bioassay laboratory, with an automated liquid handling robot behind her. Real USGS photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Medicine" page — read by families in Rapid City, SD.Why I love doctorsAstronaut Kate Rubins holds a handheld DNA sequencer while running a gene sequencing experiment aboard the space station. Real NASA photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Genetics" page — read by families in Rapid City, SD.Why I love DNAAstronaut Ricky Arnold processes swab samples of microbes collected from space station surfaces at a work station. Real NASA photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Germs" page — read by families in Rapid City, SD.Why I love germs

Near Rapid City

Why I love recycling, everywhere in the US · All things to love · STEM jobs you could do · Summer camps in Rapid City