Three 20 Yard Bins of Wreaths: The Part of Wreaths Across America Nobody Sees

In the third week of December, several thousand people come to Marietta National Cemetery to lay balsam wreaths on veterans’ graves. Trucks roll in from Maine. There is a ceremony at noon. Volunteers walk the rows, say a name out loud, and set a wreath against a headstone. It is one of the better things that happens in Cobb County all year.

Then everyone goes home, and the wreaths stay out through the holidays.

What almost nobody thinks about is the first Saturday in January, when every one of them has to come back off.

Three 20 yard bins

Wreaths Across America is built around the placement. That is where the volunteers are and where the cameras are. Removal is a different kind of day. It is cold and gray, the wreaths are heavy with rain, and there is no ceremony at the end of it.

Marietta National Cemetery holds 18,846 graves across just over 23 acres. We dropped the bins on Friday, January 5, and the cemetery was cleared on Saturday the 6th. It took three 20 yard dumpsters, which is 60 cubic yards of wreaths. Put another way, the alternative was roughly thirty pickup truck loads and thirty round trips to a disposal site.

We donated the bins and the hauling. There was no cost to the cemetery or to the organizers. Our owner Kurt worked the removal himself, along with Bo from our crew.

Why the wreaths could not just be composted

Here is the part that surprises people, and it is the reason a job like this needs a hauler rather than a yard waste pile.

A balsam wreath on its own is organic material. Add a red bow and the wire that holds it, and the load is no longer clean organics. Mixed material cannot go to a composting or yard waste facility, so all three bins went to a transfer station for disposal instead.

That distinction matters on any job, not just this one. It is the same reason we ask what is going in the bin before we quote it. Where a load can legally go is what sets the disposal cost, and material that looks organic is not always accepted as organic.

Why this cemetery

Marietta National Cemetery was established in 1866, originally as the Marietta and Atlanta National Cemetery. A local merchant named Henry Cole, who stayed loyal to the Union, offered the land. His first idea was a shared burial ground for both Union and Confederate dead, as a gesture toward reconciliation. Neither side accepted it. His second offer was taken up in 1867, and more acreage was added in 1870.

The arch at the gate reads: “Here rest the remains of 10,312 Officers and Soldiers who died in defense of the Union 1861 to 1865.”

Most died in the Atlanta Campaign. A monument on the grounds honors 405 Wisconsin soldiers who died in the Battle of Atlanta, and Private Dennis B. Buckley, a Medal of Honor recipient killed at Peachtree Creek in 1864, is memorialized there. The cemetery is closed to new interments now, except alongside family already buried there. The National Park Service at Kennesaw Mountain, a few minutes up the road, has more on the site.

Why we do this sort of thing

We are a local, veteran owned company running our own trucks with our own drivers out of Douglasville. When a job like this comes up in a town we actually serve, the cost to us is three bins and a couple of mornings. The alternative was volunteers filling pickup beds and making thirty trips.

We do the same for NARI Cares projects, for Paws Atlanta, and for Douglas County September Saturdays. None of it is complicated. We own bins and trucks, and sometimes that is the useful thing to have.

If you are organizing something in the Atlanta area and a bin would make the difference, get in touch. We would rather hear about it early than read about it afterward.

For anyone here looking for a bin for an ordinary job, here is dumpster rental in Marietta, and here is more of the community work we do.