Save the Earth - Die Yourself Green
It's a subject few people want to discuss. Oh well. Sometimes you need to. Dying green. I mean - you - when you die. Have a green funeral. Oh!!!! Really?! Ewww!
Here's an article that ran in our paper:
Taking green living to the grave
Interest grows in natural burials; Tompkins County home to a natural cemetery
When people stop by the booth Nathan Butler sets up to promote his funeral home, people routinely tell him they aren't interested in the trappings of a modern burial.
"They say 'Put me in a sheet and put me in a ditch,' " Butler says.
For many potential customers -- and in the funeral business that's everyone -- Butler sees a growing recognition that modern burials are wasteful, needlessly expensive and a capstone to one's life that is anything but earth-friendly.
So, Butler's funeral home is positioning itself on the forefront of the next wave in death care: the green burial.
Though burials come in many shades, the greenest involve cemeteries that look less like golf courses and more like nature preserves, caskets made of cardboard and bodies that aren't juiced up with embalming fluids, all at a fraction of the cost of a traditional burial.
Not confined to the tree huggers of the Pacific Northwest, green cemeteries have opened in places such as the Tompkins County community of Newfield, home to the 100-acre Greensprings Natural Cemetery, bordered by two forests. Also, there are green cemeteries in the South Carolina foothills and northeastern Ohio, and two are on the horizon in Indiana.
Final wasteland
In a society that is becoming more environmentally conscious about its coffee and its cars, leaders of the green burial movement say it only makes sense that attention would also turn to the final choices of one's life.
To the most zealous, the modern cemetery is something akin to an ecological wasteland: acres of grass manicured with fertilizers and pesticides, caskets fashioned from steel, copper, bronze or old-growth hardwoods and thick concrete vaults (the boxes in which the caskets are placed).
The corpse is most often embalmed in formaldehyde, which will eventually leach into the soil once the tomb is breached.
"If you look at your typical modern cemetery, it functions less as a natural, bucolic resting ground for the dead than as a landfill of largely nonbiodegradable, and in some cases toxic, material," says Mark Harris, whose book (Scribner, 2007, $24) "Grave Matters: A Journey Through the Modern Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial" the manifesto of the movement.
The Green Burial Council, a nonprofit that sets standards for natural burials, says enough casket metal is put into American soil every year to build a new Golden Gate bridge.
"Do we need to expend that kind of energy on a box we are going to use for one or two days and then bury forever?" asks Joe Sehee, executive director of the Green Burial Council. "Does that really jibe with our values? An increasing number of Americans are saying, 'No, it doesn't.' "
The green burial movement is still small -- just 12 certified green cemeteries across the country and about 60 green-certified funeral homes. But the approaching deaths of baby boomers, the generation behind Earth Day, are pushing funeral industry leaders to anticipate a surge in requests for greener farewells.
Educating consumers, providers
Part of the challenge to the growth of green burial lies in education, experts say.
Green funeral providers say refrigeration and a few natural tricks of the trade are enough to make unembalmed bodies presentable for open-casket calling and funerals.
Ecology aside, the green burial movement could turn the funeral business upside down in other ways.
Economically, modern burials that include embalming, steel caskets and concrete vaults can cost $10,000 or more. Green burials can be done for less than $2,000. The cost of burial plots can vary widely, but Butler expects that his natural burial spaces should be at or below costs for regular plots.
Karen Conyers, of Bloomington, Ind., buried her mother using a simple casket and no embalming, primarily for environmental reasons. But it also made economic sense.
"I don't think the family is well-served by spending thousands of dollars for something that isn't that big a part of life," says Conyers.
Ecumenical appeal
Harris found in researching his book that interest in a greener burial has appeal across religious lines.
For Muslims and Jews, whose burial practices demand that the body be allowed to decompose naturally, the fundamental notion of returning to the earth has never gone out of style. But for more than a century, most Christian funerals in America have been built less on the notion of "ashes to ashes, dust to dust" than on making caskets and vaults as impenetrable to the elements as possible.
Green burials -- by inviting decay and returning the body's elements to the earth as naturally as possible -- promise to change all that. In green cemeteries, the decay of burial remains helps feed the plants and the trees.
More Information
Article On Low Cost Burials in Michigan
The Green Burial Council
Grave Matters Website
Bringing Funerals Home - Article
How To Be Green In The Afterlife
Here's an article that ran in our paper:
Taking green living to the grave
Interest grows in natural burials; Tompkins County home to a natural cemetery
When people stop by the booth Nathan Butler sets up to promote his funeral home, people routinely tell him they aren't interested in the trappings of a modern burial.
"They say 'Put me in a sheet and put me in a ditch,' " Butler says.
For many potential customers -- and in the funeral business that's everyone -- Butler sees a growing recognition that modern burials are wasteful, needlessly expensive and a capstone to one's life that is anything but earth-friendly.
So, Butler's funeral home is positioning itself on the forefront of the next wave in death care: the green burial.
Though burials come in many shades, the greenest involve cemeteries that look less like golf courses and more like nature preserves, caskets made of cardboard and bodies that aren't juiced up with embalming fluids, all at a fraction of the cost of a traditional burial.
Not confined to the tree huggers of the Pacific Northwest, green cemeteries have opened in places such as the Tompkins County community of Newfield, home to the 100-acre Greensprings Natural Cemetery, bordered by two forests. Also, there are green cemeteries in the South Carolina foothills and northeastern Ohio, and two are on the horizon in Indiana.
Final wasteland
In a society that is becoming more environmentally conscious about its coffee and its cars, leaders of the green burial movement say it only makes sense that attention would also turn to the final choices of one's life.
To the most zealous, the modern cemetery is something akin to an ecological wasteland: acres of grass manicured with fertilizers and pesticides, caskets fashioned from steel, copper, bronze or old-growth hardwoods and thick concrete vaults (the boxes in which the caskets are placed).
The corpse is most often embalmed in formaldehyde, which will eventually leach into the soil once the tomb is breached.
"If you look at your typical modern cemetery, it functions less as a natural, bucolic resting ground for the dead than as a landfill of largely nonbiodegradable, and in some cases toxic, material," says Mark Harris, whose book (Scribner, 2007, $24) "Grave Matters: A Journey Through the Modern Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial" the manifesto of the movement.
The Green Burial Council, a nonprofit that sets standards for natural burials, says enough casket metal is put into American soil every year to build a new Golden Gate bridge.
"Do we need to expend that kind of energy on a box we are going to use for one or two days and then bury forever?" asks Joe Sehee, executive director of the Green Burial Council. "Does that really jibe with our values? An increasing number of Americans are saying, 'No, it doesn't.' "
The green burial movement is still small -- just 12 certified green cemeteries across the country and about 60 green-certified funeral homes. But the approaching deaths of baby boomers, the generation behind Earth Day, are pushing funeral industry leaders to anticipate a surge in requests for greener farewells.
Educating consumers, providers
Part of the challenge to the growth of green burial lies in education, experts say.
Green funeral providers say refrigeration and a few natural tricks of the trade are enough to make unembalmed bodies presentable for open-casket calling and funerals.
Ecology aside, the green burial movement could turn the funeral business upside down in other ways.
Economically, modern burials that include embalming, steel caskets and concrete vaults can cost $10,000 or more. Green burials can be done for less than $2,000. The cost of burial plots can vary widely, but Butler expects that his natural burial spaces should be at or below costs for regular plots.
Karen Conyers, of Bloomington, Ind., buried her mother using a simple casket and no embalming, primarily for environmental reasons. But it also made economic sense.
"I don't think the family is well-served by spending thousands of dollars for something that isn't that big a part of life," says Conyers.
Ecumenical appeal
Harris found in researching his book that interest in a greener burial has appeal across religious lines.
For Muslims and Jews, whose burial practices demand that the body be allowed to decompose naturally, the fundamental notion of returning to the earth has never gone out of style. But for more than a century, most Christian funerals in America have been built less on the notion of "ashes to ashes, dust to dust" than on making caskets and vaults as impenetrable to the elements as possible.
Green burials -- by inviting decay and returning the body's elements to the earth as naturally as possible -- promise to change all that. In green cemeteries, the decay of burial remains helps feed the plants and the trees.
More Information
Article On Low Cost Burials in Michigan
The Green Burial Council
Grave Matters Website
Bringing Funerals Home - Article
How To Be Green In The Afterlife
Labels: biosafety, Conserve, death, funeral, green design
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