It may just be a coincidence that his name is Nicholas, but 18-year-old Nicholas Lomboy of Manheim Township is out to make Christmas a greener experience.

For the past month, the Lancaster Catholic High School senior has been making a Christmas tree in his family's garage — out of more than 1,000 recycled clear water bottles.

He had plenty of help from his family, including his parents, Mary Grace and Clifford Lomboy.

"My mom held the top of the tree while I wrapped chicken wire around it. It's a pretty big tree," Nicholas said.

Big means that Nick's huge tree is more than 10 feet tall and about 6 feet in diameter.

That takes a lot of water bottles, most of them supplied by his friends, his parents, his younger brother, Christian, 13, and just about everybody they know. Even his sister, Elise, 21, a college student, has contributed a few bottles to the cause.

For Nicholas, the project has two purposes.

First, it's an effort to show what can be done with used plastic water bottles, besides clogging up landfills. He wants to make the point that plastic bottles should be reused, not just tossed aside.

"It takes a thousand years for a plastic bottle to just start to decompose," said Nicholas, who is a member of the Environmental Club at his high school.

To make matters worse, plastic is a polycarbonate-based product that uses oil, which is becoming more and more scarce. With the rampant use of plastic in water bottles, food containers and other products, there also have been issues related to the safety of the bisphenol A (BPA) used in some plastic bottles.

While people are encouraged to drink water for health reasons, using plastic bottles may not be the best choice. It is estimated that 4.5 billion plastic water bottles are used each year, according to Nicholas.

"What happens to them all? They just sit around, piling up," he said.

Or else they can be made into a sparkling, shimmering Christmas tree that glows with a clear, white light.

That leads to the second reason why Nicholas is making a huge recycled Christmas tree crafted from water bottles.

He is an art student at Lancaster Catholic and hopes to attend art school after he graduates. His art teacher, area artist Dick Ressel, has encouraged him to do an installation as part of his senior art portfolio.

An installation is a large, three-dimensional art project that requires design, craftsmanship and construction.

The recycled Christmas tree will be part of his portfolio, consisting of about 20 art pieces. Many of them will utilize recycled materials, such as old newspapers, paper clips and wine bottle corks, in keeping with his "green" thinking.

Nicholas crafted his recycled Christmas tree with water bottles, chicken wire and lots of fishing line to hold everything together. He plans to use environmentally friendly halogen lights to light it up.

In fact, the Lomboy family is planning to celebrate Christmas with an old-fashioned tree-lighting this Saturday evening.

There will be hot chocolate with marshmallows, cookies and carol singing in the wooded area next to their home.

In the middle of it all will be a huge Christmas tree that bears little resemblance to the surrounding pine trees, except maybe the shape.

"We've invited students and teachers from Lancaster Catholic, and friends and neighbors," Mary Grace Lomboy said. "We may have 100 or more people."

After Christmas, Nicholas wants to find a home for his recycled water bottle tree. He'll donate it to an organization that would like to use and display the tree year after year, keeping at least 1,000 water bottles out of the dump.

That might just put a whole new spin on celebrating Christmas with an artificial tree that's "green," but not actually green.