Eco Burials, the latest ‘Green’ thing

The latest eco-friendly trend, that can be your last environmentally friendly act before leaving this world, has been labeled green burial.

This new burial process shuns the traditional burial ritual which environmentalist believe is exacting a huge toll on the environment. Embalming injects corpses with formaldehyde, a known carcinogen, that releases blood-borne pathogens into the sewer systems and eventually the water table. The green burial process uses no embalming fluid. Lacquer and varnish on caskets contain petrochemicals and the concrete vaults that encase each burial plot block rainwater from returning to the water table. The green burial method places the body in a bio-degradable pod made of cardboard or newspaper or specially certified wood. Traditional cemeteries also eat up a lot of land: if we extrapolate from the average size of a coffin and the number of annual deaths, burial plots alone gobble up a lot of real estate. The green burial method allows your body to become natures’ compost.

Though green burials have been reversing the traditional burial rituals in the United Kingdom and other European countries for several years, the ritual is just beginning to attract attention in the United States.

Ancient civilizations chose to bury their dead in shrouds or wooden boxes, without first infusing bodies with chemicals. And some cemeteries have forbidden the use of formaldehyde, concrete, metal or any other material not completely biodegradable. Some traditional cemeteries have special sections set aside for green burials.

In these new age burial grounds, graves are marked only with a plant or a stone natural to the area. The grave sites’ GPS location is given to loved ones so the site can always be located.

Advocates argue that a green approach to burial is environmentally friendly, spiritually uplifting and often less costly than the conventional American way of laying people to rest.

Currently, the mortuary industry in the U.S. is dominated by three international corporations which controls every aspect of death care from transportation to cemetery lawn maintenance. The average funeral today runs around $7,000 and costs keep rising.

The Redwood Funeral Society, of Sonoma California, has been advocating the use of biodegradable caskets and an end to the practice of embalming since 1992. Although the society had found one independent funeral director whose services were reasonable, Karen Leonard, RFS founder, has been encouraging people to avoid morticians altogether by caring for their own dead, a movement which Jeri Lyons' Natural Deathcare Project has done much to foster. Families saved money in the process, but even then, they had to use standard facilities for cremation or burial. With this latest trend, families can save money and feel good about doing even more for the earth.

The current practice of embalming the body is believed to have begun in ancient Egypt. The Egyptians embalmed for religious reasons, believing it necessary to have a body to enter the afterlife. During the American Civil War, embalming was done to preserve the bodies of troops so that they could be shipped back to their families for burial. Today we embalm our dead for preservation and restoration to a more pleasing appearance.

Caskets have been in use since before 695 AD when the Celts used flat stones that were held together in the shape of a box. In about 1066 Kings and noblemen across the world were buried in luxurious, bejeweled caskets. The Vikings of about 900 AD had perhaps the most unique take on caskets that history has to offer. They turned ships and boats into large caskets upon which they would set fire and then set sail to burn at sea.

Today's caskets continue to be made mostly of steel, but, with the rise in popularity of cremation, caskets made of combustible wood are also very popular. Today's caskets still follow the traditional rectangular design and are still designed to be as airtight as possible. (Since their beginning, a chief aim of caskets has been to preserve a body for as long as possible. Scientists have recently discovered, however, that bodies in airtight caskets tend to decompose more quickly than those in more open caskets.) But variations on the traditional look are also becoming more common. Caskets have been known to come in some very offbeat shapes and designs. Some caskets have been shaped to look like large gym bags, guitars, and even dumpster bins. Others caskets have been painted with tropical scenes, sunsets and sea shells.

The practice of ‘viewing’ the body before burial is a practice designed to help mourners accept that death has really occurred and is the only reason we still embalm the body.

We honor our departed with gravestones marking their birth and death dates and are considered an important part of the grieving process.

Up until now the only other option to burial has been the cremation of the body.

According to the Cremation Association of North America, almost twenty percent of people who choose a cremation do so thinking that it is a more sustainable choice, but cremations use an exorbitant amount of fossil fuel and sends potentially toxic mercury and other chemicals into the air from the burning of dental fillings. The EPA estimates that crematoriums emit about 320 pounds of mercury each year, admittedly a tiny share of the tons of the chemical pumped into the atmosphere by other industrial sources, but nonetheless, every amount that doesn’t go into the air is better for all of us.

Eco burials actually benefit the environment, preserving land from other development and acting as a wildlife preserve. The area is legally protected by legislation from any future development, ensuring the sustainability of the land in perpetuity.

Eco Coffins Ltd of England offers the original Ecopod, a peapod-shaped biodegradable casket made of paper and hardened with minerals, sort of like papier-mâché, which was developed in Britain. (Correction: Eco Coffins Ltd makes the EcoCoffin not the Ecopod. Please see correction below). The pod can be plain cardboard that you can have painted or stained or decaled any way you want. Or, if you are so inspired, you can paint it yourself.

Green cemeteries, hosting natural burials, have sprouted up in California, Florida, New York, South Carolina and Texas.

A South Carolina-based company created a memorial park, the Ramsey Creek Preserve, where your decomposing body returns its nutrients as food for flora and fauna. Relatives and friends can walk among the trees on a forest walk to pay their respects.

The majority of eco-friendly burial products come from overseas although there are a few domestic makers. Options range from natural-fiber shrouds to fair-trade bamboo caskets lined with unbleached cotton and caskets with custom paint jobs and urns with the insignia of a favorite sports team. There are also more traditional-looking handcrafted coffins made of wood certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

Biodegradable containers cost from around $100 for a basic cardboard box up to more than $3,000 for a handcrafted, hand-painted model.

“It’s hard to tell if it’s a fad or if it’s here to stay,” said Bob Fells, of the International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association. “We are certainly positioning ourselves that if this is what the community wants, we are ready to serve them.”

The Green Burial Council is working on certification programs to verify the commitment and quality of providers who say they are going natural.

“What we are trying to do is to make sure this concept doesn’t get ’green-washed’ down the drain,” said Joe Sehee, the council’s founder and executive director.

As a side note to environmentalist who are far enough out on the fringe, some people want their body rendered like any other dead animal. The body is crushed or boiled to separate the fat from the bone. The fat can then be used to make animal feed, wax, glue, etc.

In my opinion, this is going a tad bit too far but it could become an option as the next ‘green’ thing.


(Correction Jan 3, 2008)
Cynthia Beal, of Natural Burial Company, was kind enough to submit a comment to this post and pointed out a few corrections that I would like to relay.

Here is her comment in its entirety:

Thanks for the post - it's great to see that folks are learning about this natural option before it's "too late."

One correction - the Ecopod is sold in the USA by the Natural Burial Company and doesn't have anything to do with EcoCoffins UK. They are completely separate businesses.

The Ecopod is handsculpted from recycled newspapers and covered in handmade paper. Its design is inspired by an Egyptian sarcophagus and a maple seed, and it was created by a former UK midwife and organic farmer, Hazel Selina.

In addition to the paper and wood coffins, an intermediate choice is a coffin of woven fiber. Woven fiber coffins biodegrade more quickly than wood (less quickly than the paper, of course) and, what's even better, they keep the arts of basketry alive.

These woven coffins are currently imported because we Americans have lost the arts of strong-basket making. Hopefully, strong consumer demand for a more "natural end" will help artisans in the US step up and begin to create woven coffins so that the imports won't be as necessary. We use them now because they're "tried and tested" but we hope this can stimulate a whole new trend in artisan burial arts.

I've written a book called "Be a Tree, the Natural Burial Guide for Turning Yourself into a Forest." A free online condensation is available at http://www.beatree.com since the paper version won't be out for awhile and the publisher is kind enough to let me make it available to the public. "Be a Tree" talks a lot about the natural burial movement, home funerals, green cemeteries, and what action steps people need to take to get something more natural happening in their area.

Thanks again for making the Ecopod source correction - the Natural Burial Company is my company, and the business is my way of funding the education necessary to bring awareness of these new possibilities to all of us.
in trees,

Cynthia

I apologize for the inaccuracy and hope this correction alleviates any confusion I might have generated.

You bring up a wonderful point concerning the ‘Arts in basketry’, very interesting. Basket weaving is a true art form as any basket collector would attest. And what a fitting use of art as a way in which to celebrate the life of a loved one.

Thank you, Cynthia for taking the time to make this correction.