Being inventive to save the environment is a plight shared by many around the world. From women in Haiti and India making beautiful and functional purses and tote bags from the discarded plastic they find in landfills to the Key Club of Minot Central Campus in North Dakota collecting blue jeans to create insulation, great ideas abound.
The club’s denim drive was held in conjunction with the “Cotton. From Blue to Green” program of the Vanity store and Cotton Incorporated, which was launched to help rebuild communities affected by natural disasters along the gulf coast.
The jeans are taken to be processed into environmentally friendly insulation that will go into homes for people in need, according to Key Club members Kenedee Kristjanson and Alexsea Davis.
To do their part, Key Club members posted fliers around school explaining the importance to the program and asking for students’ old jeans. In return, those who donated received 25 percent off a new pair of jeans from Vanity.
The local news was on hand to capture the club’s official count.
“Once all the jeans were collected, we received a final total of 119 pairs of ripped, stained and unwanted jeans,” says Davis. While it takes 500 pairs to create the insulation needed for an entire house, the club was just happy to help and be a part of something bigger: their donation helped the create 332,000 lbs of insulation that will go into 210 houses through the collection of 105,192 pairs of jeans. This exceeded the original Blue to Green goal of 100,000 pairs
“During this project, the Central Key Club discovered that helping others and volunteering is more than extra work,” says Kristjanson. “We learned that volunteering teaches you hard work, team work, cooperation, and it builds your character by teaching you to become strong and caring. In the process of helping someone else, you meet new people who, like yourself, want to be a helping hand to their community and nation.”
