Going green for St. Patrick's Day - and the environment by Trevor Keyes

St. Patrick's Day is synonymous with four-leaf clovers and the color green, something Ziggy Kozicki and wife Stephanie Baiyasi took literally.

The pair is responsible for assembling more than 20 students from area high schools and colleges to take part in creating a 'green' eco-float for the 54th annual St. Patrick's Day Parade on Sunday.

The float was constructed to promote The Great Lakes Environmental Film Festival, but also to draw attention to the environment and to stop blaming business for problems that people can remedy in their own lives, Kozicki said.

Kozicki, the organizer of The Great Lakes Environmental Film Festival, and Baiyasi, an assistant professor at Delta College, organized students from Bay City Central High School, Delta College, Midland High School and Saginaw Valley State University to help build the float.

The float will be one of more than 40 in the parade and one of more than 140 entries, including horse-drawn carriages, marching bands and antique fire trucks.

The eco-float is made up of recycled materials and discarded items that found a new use. Aluminum cans from around Delta College's campus, wine bottles from Ciccone Vineyard and Winery of Suttons Bay, wood not suitable for sale from Home Depot, recycled rebar from Spence Brothers of Saginaw.

The trailer, donated by Labadie Toyota of Bay City, is in a way a recycled item too, Kozicki said.

"I said 'Give us the worst trailer you've got. We're going to put it in the parade.' It's just showing that it has another function, another life," Kozicki said.

Kayla Srodawa, 21, of Midland, was the designer of the float and says she used Kozicki's vision as her inspiration for the design.

She is using second-hand clothes donated by the Economy Center, 800 E. Vermont St., as the simulated water and beach on the platform of the float.

"It's going to be a cross section of types of nature and beautiful land," said Srodawa. "Stephanie (Baiyasi) had the idea of using some clothes, so I thought those could be water with plastic bags as waves and then move up onto the land."

Srodawa, like many of the volunteers building the float earlier this week at Delta College's M-Wing, was contacted by the husband-and-wife team, only in a little different way.

"They came in to ask if we were going to donate, said Srodawa, who works at Home Depot. "I said, 'I'm a graphic designer and we'll see what we can do.'"

The float is a perfect addition to the St. Patrick's Day Parade, organizers say, because they too are urging the crowd to stay "green" - as in environmentally friendly.

Alan Rau, line-up chairman for the parade, said he encourages parade viewers to do two things.

"Put a buck in the (donation) bucket and put your trash in the barrels," he said.

Kaitlyn Skrzypczak, co-founder and co-president of Bay City Central High School's Green Club, helped build the float. She hopes it will make spectators think. "Maybe they'll be holding their beer cans and decide not to throw it in the street," the 16-year-old junior said.

After the parade, employees from Do-All Inc. will begin cleaning the streets, Rau said. They are paid an hourly rate for the cleanup.

"The less they have to pick up, the more money we make," Rau said.

That's important, he said, because the St. Patrick's Day Parade Association is in need of money to plan for the 2009 parade.

Also important, said Rose and Irv McEachern, is the weather on Sunday. A warm up, despite the implications of global warming, would be helpful.

"I think it's going to be nice," said Irv McEachern, who helps his wife register parade entries.

Kozicki and Baiyasi hope the public will join the volunteers and march alongside the float, which will be pulled by a Toyota Highlander Hybrid from Labadie Toyota.

The only requisite is color choice.

"Walk with us along the float. Just wear green," Baiyasi said.

Bay City Times Environmental Article by Jeff Kart

Garbage, garbage everywhere.

That's what Glenn Madigan and Kaitlyn Skrzypczak see when they take a walk, or a drive, or spend their day at Central High School in Bay City.

Crumpled paper. Discarded plastic bottles. Cigarette butts.

''It's definitely a pet peeve of ours,'' Madigan said.

But rather than just complaining about it, the two 16-year-old juniors decided to see how many other Central students wanted a cleaner Bay City.

At least 30, it turns out.

Madigan and Skrzypczak are co-founders of Green Club, a student group that's been meeting on Tuesday afternoons at the school since early October, and has 30 members, and counting.

Students have spent recent Saturdays cleaning up and hauling away bags of trash from local parks and school grounds.

''Our peers don't realize the damage they're doing,'' said Madigan, of Bay City.

Skrzypczak, of Linwood, said a bush in Central's courtyard is a popular place for garbage, for instance, even though there's a trash can right next to it.

The two students have a plan to bring more students into the fold.

Three times this year, club members picked up pop bottles after football games, netting $21 in deposits.

Madigan raised another $11 by rescuing 140 pounds of steel magazine holders that the school library was planning to discard. He cashed them in at the Omnisource scrapyard in Bay City, and used the money to make signs advertising the club.

Skrzypczak said the club is looking for a company to donate recycling recepticles to the school, for pop bottles.

Madigan and Skrzypczak hope to use proceeds from club efforts to put on an Earth Day event in April and design and sell cloth shopping bags to students. They're working on a Web site.

The two students say they decided to form the club after watching the Al Gore global warming documentary, ''An Inconvenient Truth,'' in their advanced placement history class.

Craig Windt, the class teacher, is now the club advisor.

Windt said he's impressed at what Madigan and Skrzypczak have already accomplished, and like-minded students that have joined in.

''There are a lot of students who want to change things, but there are very few students that actually want to stand up and organize that change,'' he said.

Wind said Central is in need of environmental awareness.

''It's amazing how at the end of the day, this building can be trashed,'' he said.

''It just seems like kids should be more aware ... A lot of them do seem to have a level of apathy that's kind of disturbing.''

After Green Club has become more established, members hope to approach school administrators about water and energy conservation, Skrzypczak said.

As the club has ramped up its efforts, Madigan and Skrzypczak have gone vegetarian, after reading that methane emitted by cows is a large contributor to global warming.

''We're pretty passionate,'' Madigan said.