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

Binghamton NY Going LEED

Binghamton joins nationwide trend to make buildings more environmentally friendly
By George Spohr
Press & Sun-Bulletin

LEED. Green design. Sustainable buildings.

They're industry buzzwords, but they're also changing the way buildings in Binghamton are engineered and designed. And with global warming regularly making headlines, a lot is riding on that shift.

John Knudson, senior principal at Bearsch Compeau Knudson Architects & Engineers in Binghamton, recalls telling his staff, "Guys, we have a role in this. We can make a difference in our little world here."

That philosophy is gaining momentum here and across the nation. At BCK, for example, management set a goal of having four professionals receive the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) accreditation. It has 12. In 2002, there were 2,443 LEED accredited professionals nationally. Now there are 39,636.

What's the appeal?

Philippe Dordai, an expert on sustainable design at RMJM Hillier of New Jersey, one of the nation's largest architectural firms, said he's seen a "snowball effect" borne of a heightened awareness of environmental issues -- and an ability for businesses to save money by incorporating green principles into their buildings.

"I don't think it's unique to Binghamton," Dordai said. "Depending on who the client is, there's certainly always an element of it being the right thing to do, but probably more so, there's an element of economic sense here. I think the green building movement, and especially LEED, has been smart about positioning itself as a way of saving money.

"I think that, to be really blunt, the money-saving side is the greater motivator, and, along with it, you get some brownie points in terms of being a better citizen," he said.

For some clients, being a better citizen is the selling point, said Chris Kopec, BCK's director of sustainable design.

"People are really starting to realize the impact that these buildings that we design have on the environment," he said. "We, as architects and engineers, really are just seeing the opportunity there that something needs to be done, and we're in a great position, just by our profession, to make a significant change."

Kopec said his research shows that buildings account for:

* 40 percent of the nation's energy usage.

* 30 percent of the nation's raw materials.

* 15 percent of the nation's water usage.

BCK is on track to deliver Greater Binghamton's first LEED certified building with the Jennie F. Snapp Middle School in Endicott. And in Ithaca, several buildings have been LEED certified. Certified buildings maximize energy efficiency and are designed to be as environmentally sound as possible.

"For the building industry, becoming an accredited professional encourages and promotes a higher understanding of LEED and supports (our) mission of transforming the built environment," said Ashley Katz, a U.S. Green Building Council spokeswoman.

Kopec said green designed projects are often more cost-effective than traditionally designed projects. Even projects that don't meet LEED standards can be built to higher environmental standards.

"There are some minor administrative additional costs with the LEED certification itself, but just in the sustainable design portion of it? It really depends," he said. "You can take this to an extreme and it could cost additional money, but the way we approach it is we have a set budget on these projects. ... Ultimately, when done successfully, this can save the owner costs on their municipal waste, as well as the electrical cost itself."

In Binghamton, many projects are "adaptive reuse" ventures -- projects that, unlike new construction, involve using an existing building and adapting it to new uses. That lends itself well to environmentally sound projects, sometimes more so than new buildings, Dordai said.

"The most sustainable thing you can do is reuse an old building," he said. "In fact, there are a number of credits in LEED that reward you for placing buildings in higher-density areas. One of the great advantages of building in an urban-renewal area is all of the infrastructure is already there. You just tap into them.

"Most cities, like Trenton (N.J.) or Binghamton, probably have a wealth of infrastructure that really isn't being used," he added. "Those cities grew and then they shrank. From a sustainability point of view, it's tremendously advantageous to work in denser communities. To build in a place where people can take mass transit to work. To build in a place where people can even walk to work."

Knudson said all of his firm's projects are built with green design in mind -- even those that won't qualify for LEED certification.

"While LEED is what we're following right now, and what we're going after in the Union-Endicott project, the importance of the strategies and practices in sustainable design are carried through in all our projects," he said.