RIVERVIEW, Fla. — More than 600 wreaths placed at Riverview Cemetery to honor fallen veterans are being removed in a way to help preserve their memories.
Wreaths Across America, the Boy Scouts of America and Hillsborough County Solid Waste teamed up Saturday morning at the cemetery's Serenity Meadows for the special project.
Veteran Rico Dixson says it’s teaching a powerful lesson.
“One of the things we are teaching is the power of freedom but also the power of sustainability and environmental responsibility,” Dixson said.
Joe O’Neill from Hillsborough Solid Waste is also a veteran and says this is a much more constructive and respectable way to honor the veterans.
“It’s a reuse of a product that would otherwise go into a landfill,” he said.
The wreaths were all collected from the graves, loaded up and then disassembled piece by piece. First, the supporting frame was clipped and then tags, ribbons, flags were removed and salvaged for a new purpose.
Boy Scout, Landon Tucker added, "They can keep the tags, they can throw them out, they can do whatever they want with them, but I like to keep them every year," Boy Scout Landon Tucker said.
O'Neill added, “As an environmentalist and a taxpayer, we want to make sure we do this in an environmentally friendly way.”
And Dixson calls it heartwarming.
“We are taking what we placed out to honor those veterans, but now we are going to also honor our planet," he said. And says he’s proud to make sure the veterans sacrifice lives on and are not forgotten: “By recycling and repurposing the materials in the wreaths.”