As a child of the 70s, there were a few simple ways you could recycle your blue jeans that were too worn out to be worn as pants anymore. First, you could take your pants, cut off much of the legs and create cut-off shorts. Or you could cut off the legs and sew the remnants together, creating a denim mini skirt. Or you could take parts of the jeans and sew them together to make a handbag. (Check out this blog that offers lots of crafts using jeans.)

Yeah, I’m pretty good with a pair of scissors, not so much with sewing machines–though if I had owned one of these Brother International “Project Runway” series of machines, things might have been different for my jeans. Because I wasn’t talented enough to do much with my jeans, they usually ended up on one of my mom’s scarecrows or (gasp) in the trash.

These days I would probably try to come up with a million different things I could do with a pair of jeans before tossing them in the trash. Obviously, I would donate them if they’re still wearable or, if they were a designer brand, maybe try to sell them on eBay. But what about the jeans that are beyond repair? How on earth can you recycle them? Well, just like my earlier post on ways to recycle clothing beyond rags, there are options for recycling denim beyond dressing scarecrows in them.

* Turn your jeans into insulation.
For a couple of years now, Cotton Inc (you know, the “cotton is the fabric of our lives” people) have been spearheading a “blue to green” program that encourages people to recycle their denim. Right now, there are denim collection drives going on at colleges around the country. (Maybe you live near one of them?) The denim that is collected is then turned into insulation for homes. Much of this insulation ends up in homes that Habitat for Humanity builds.

* Donate your jeans to charity.
I’d mentioned in an earlier post that the Multiple Sclerosis Association takes unwearable clothes and sells the scraps for cash. There’s no reason you couldn’t include worn-out jeans in these kinds of collections. Another way to give your jeans a worthwhile second life is to donate pieces of them to charities that will use the materials to make items that benefit others. Case in point: Ugly Quilts, which creates sleeping bags that they distribute to the homeless. Maybe a Girl Scout troop near you is working on their sewing badge (assuming that badge still exists) and could benefit from working with scrap denim. It’s worth checking out.

* Hand your jeans down to a local school.
This isn’t about dressing students but about supplying art teachers at schools with supplies for projects. Says Val Webb, a professional illustrator and former art educator, “Community art centers and high school art departments are good places to inquire about donating any unwanted denim jeans. 100% cotton jeans can be cut up and incorporated into handmade paper very easily.(The result is a soft, rough paper with a pale blue tint.) Most educational art programs are managed on very tight budgets, and art instructors have plenty of innovative ways to use a wide range of donated materials.”

* See if a craftsperson could use your jeans.
I’ve had tons of people writing to me about craftspeople on Etsy who upcycle jeans into really cool accessories. Some of these creative folks are Jessi Ink, Pink Pitcher (aka That Crafty Bitch), and The Recycled Jeans Co. Why not send them an email and see if they can’t take some of your jeans off your hands?

* Find your inner crafty person.
Does your town have a community school or community college have a continuing education program? Might you be able to sign up for a crafting class that could teach you how to turn denim (and other fabric) scraps into works of art–or at least a new pocketbook? If you happen to live in London (as in England), go check out my friend Jennifer’s business The Make Lounge. I’m sure she can help you figure out how to make old jeans into something new. Or you can pick up a copy of this cool book I just heard about called Jean Therapy. See the link to Amazon below.