COLUMBUS, Ohio -- As part of his recycling initiative, 11-year-old "Eco" Erek Hansen will be collecting used denim at the 2012 Micki Zartman Scarlet and Gray Ag Day on Friday, April 27, on Ohio State University's College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences campus.
Collection sites will be located until noon at the Nationwide and Ohio Farm Bureau 4-H Center, 2201 Fred Taylor Drive, and the Scarlet and Gray Ag Day registration tent, located north of Plumb Hall, 2027 Coffey Road.
Hansen will be the featured speaker at the 2012 Scarlet and Gray Ag Day lunch program.
Hansen hosts denim drives in order to recycle the material into UltraTouch (TM)Denim Insulation (http://www.CottonFromBluetoGreen.org). He has set a Guinness World Record for the “Largest Collection of Clothing to be Recycled” by collecting 1,684 pairs of jeans in just one weekend, and his goal for this year is to collect 5,000 pairs of jeans. Hansen collected at the 2010 and 2011 Scarlet and Gray Ag Days, receiving 300 pairs of jeans in total.
Hansen epitomizes this year’s Ag Day theme of Agriculture: Superheroes in Our Fields, as he advocates for recycling and promotes a more responsible use of natural resources, said Micki Zartman, who founded Scarlet and Gray Ag Day in 1999 and continues to act as co-adviser for the group. His goal, he says, is to get everyone to reduce, reuse, or recycle just one item per day, saving the world one pair of jeans at a time.
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Media: For more information on "Eco" Erek Hansen, see http://ecoerek.org. To arrange interviews please contact Stephanie Verhoff at 419-796-0055 or email verhoff.79@osu.edu, or Leslie Risch at 614-292-4278 or email osuagday@yahoo.com.