COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa (KMTV) — Every year, tons of plastic from artificial flowers end up in landfills after Memorial Day. At CHI Mercy Hospital in Council Bluffs, a small team of volunteers is doing something different with them.
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For more than 50 years, hospital volunteers have been refurbishing and reselling artificial flowers collected from St. Joseph Cemetery.
"Oh, yeah, plastic is forever, " said Cathy Frieze, who has been a volunteer for most of the 50-plus years that hospital volunteers have been upcycling the artificial flowers.
About a week after Memorial Day, flowers are cleared from gravesites and donated to the hospital, where the volunteers clean and rebuild the arrangements.
"This is something that I just made this morning," Frieze said.
Tracy Herrington, the hospital's volunteer manager, watches the work unfold: "You'll come in and you'll see the flowers when they first come and they're a wreck. And they've made 'em beautiful, they've redone 'em, cleaned 'em up."
The refurbished bouquets are also less expensive than new ones. All proceeds go back into the hospital, funding items like rocking chairs for the maternity center and furniture for the emergency room waiting area.
"I enjoy just being able to come to work, and be able to go to the cemeteries, and not have to go shopping and looking around," Herrington said.
Volunteers of all ages serve throughout the hospital. Herrington said the hospital can always use more volunteers, particularly for the craft team, which also organizes semi-annual craft fairs.
"We do what we can with the few that we have right now," Frieze said.
The flower sale hours:
May 4 & 5, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.
May 12 - 14, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.
For more information, contact the hospital gift shop.
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