Earth Day events this weekend will fill city streets with music, vendors and educational information about the environment.
The 2003 Earth Day celebration, which will shut down M.A.C. Avenue from noon to 5 p.m. between Grand River and Albert avenues, was pushed back to Sunday due to last weekend's Easter holiday.
The event will include the 2003 Great Lakes Energy Efficient Motor rally headed by Douglas Black. Black is traveling to state middle schools from Muskegon to Chelsea in the gas-electric hybrid Toyota Prius and E85 Chevrolet Tahoe, running on 85 percent ethanol.
Black said he hopes to take the entire trip on one tank of fuel.
"We are very excited with the enthusiasm we see from sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders compared to some of the adults," he said. "The kids understand that it is a problem that they will deal with in the future."
The educational tour will display a school bus that runs on recycled corn oil. Black said the kids respond well to a school bus that smells like french fries.
"It shows our enthusiasm and commitment to lessening our dependency on foreign oil," he said. "Not only are we not using fossil fuels, but we are also helping the local farmers because these vehicles run on soy and corn byproducts."
Black said the 2003 motor rally will return to the Ann Street Plaza for the celebration and lead the motorcade to the Capitol and anyone with an energy efficient car is welcome to join him.
While Black travels the state to educate kids of the benefits of alternate energy sources, Lansing resident Teri Parks will be organizing Sunday's event. Parks owns Bohemian Barber, 223 M.A.C. Ave.
Parks said environmental education for children will be a focus of the event, which has a budget running between $2,000 and $3,000. Most of the funding is coming from local merchants, she added.
"If you do really basic stuff and show them it is important to make the playground less messy, they'll get it," she said. "If they hear it from a person or a puppet, they are going to listen. They are the ones we are trying to save a patch of green space for."
The Earth Day event will provide a children's station where kids will contribute to an environmentally conscious mural.
"East Lansing has a great recycling program, but a lot of people still don't know about it," he said.
She said this year's celebration will be in the memory of Bob Metzger, a local real estate businessman who started a tradition of planting geraniums in front of his real estate company.
"We're trying to make this like the art festival, but it's going to take a while to get it to that size," she said.
The Fuzz is just one of the bands performing Sunday. Joe Davis, the band's manager, said bringing live local music to Earth Day is an excellent way to bring people downtown.
"Earth Day has always been a cool event," he said. "They would close down the street and all the people come out for the music and a good cause. We were happy to do it to get the East Lansing crowd out there. We like to help out the community that helps us out."
