Sunflower casket inspired by green burials
So you bring your own bags to the store, host clothing swaps, and actively petition companies to reduce their packaging. But have you thought about how you might prevent waste after you die?
Last month my family had to deal with this rather grim subject when my grandfather passed away. How best to deal with his remains?
What’s the green burial option?
The funeral operator presented us with two options: burial and cremation. A traditional burial service requires a heavy casket made of metal or wood, preserves formaldehyde or other chemicals preservatives, a concrete vault to put the casket in, and a plot of land that cannot be used for any other purpose in perpetuity.
Cremation requires fewer material resources, but the large amount of energy that’s needed produces greenhouse gas emissions as well as other air pollutants such as mercury, nitrous oxides, carbon monoxide, and heavy metals.
Both of these options would cost well over $5,000, not to mention all the other expenses involved with a traditional funeral. Neither of these options sat well with me. I knew my grandfather would not have wanted us to waste money or resources, but it seemed inevitable.
The bigger picture on embalming
As I started to research this, I found out just how big of a problem this is nationally. In the U.S. alone, over 2.5 million people die every year. The EPA estimates that over a million gallons of formaldehyde are used annually for embalming. Each cremation is estimated to add 110 pounds of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. Also, the average funeral costs between $6,500-$10,000 dollars. As the population grows, so too will these numbers. And the land available for burials will continue to dwindle. So are there other options?
The “green” lining to burials
Thankfully, there is. It’s called “green burials.” They give families the option to bury their loved ones in wicker baskets, bamboo coffins, or even light shrouds that easily break down when buried. The family can even pick a tree that can be planted on top of the body; representing the circle of life, the tree absorbs nutrients from the body to grow.
One artist, Jae Rim Lee, takes this idea a step further and suggests that we bury our loved ones in a suit containing hundreds of mushroom spores that will break down the harmful toxins that have accumulated within us. Listen to her TED Talk here.
Ultimately, my family decided to bury my grandfather inside a cherry wood casket within a concrete vault. I wish I would have known then that we had other options. Even though the funeral director did not give us this green burial choice, I was glad to find out later that more and more funeral homes are now offering this option nationwide. And it’s certainly started to make me want to “plan ahead” for myself.
This isn’t necessarily the most uplifting subject to talk about, but it makes me happy to think we all have a choice. How have you addressed this issue in your own family? Thought about this for yourself?
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Much more uplifting to take a walk on a nice trail in the woods and look at a plaque under a tree than to visit a traditional cemetery, unless of course it is in Milan, Italy where stone memorials are actually ornate art sculpture. The Neptune Society even has an underwater park where cremated remains are built into structures that turn into fish habitats. These are all coupled with Internet memorials. Finally, there are services where you can preserve your DNA in perpetuity. In the next few thousand years, it may be possible to recreate life from DNA alone. So, whatever you do, plan ahead.
Miranda, thank-you so much for this post. It really is so important! So many folks have no idea that green burials are even an option let alone the resources and toxins used for conventional burials. One should read Grave Matters which is enlightening to say the least!!
The truth is that funerals are an “industry” and sadly some lacking the morals an ethics that should go with laying one to rest. Have a look at the Funeral Consumer Alliance (FCA https://www.funerals.org/) –
“Funeral Consumers Alliance is a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting a consumer’s right to choose a meaningful, dignified, affordable funeral. Think of us as if we were the “Consumer Reports” of the funeral business.”
Furthermore there are currently VERY few cemeteries across the US that allow for actual “green burials” — and I have researched this as in my living will specifies such details for myself. The idea of being put back into the earth simply among nature and with an indigenous plant, shrub or tree to mark my place brings me more peace than I can put into words.
One of my clients is a non-denominational minister who focuses on end of life resources and we have created an entire page on her website with info on green burials with links and resources – http://www.gravesitekeepers.com/green-burials-info.html. She is quite passionate about letting folks know they have other options.
I hope with more and more awareness that more cemeteries dedicate areas for green burials. Others have been requesting people donate land so that they may be set-up as preserves where folks may be put to rest naturally.
There is a fascinating life cycle assessment of the four different types of funerals: burial, cremation, cryomation and resomation. Here is the link: http://www.tno.nl/home.cfm?context=home&content=gsa&search=burial&zoekBtn=Zoeken. Or just go to http://www.tno.nl and type “burial” into the search box and it is the first on the list. Cryo is freeze drying and resomation is done in a resomator where the body is dissolved with acid. Burial is by far the most impact, and resomation by far the least. However, the burial type used in the study is for a traditional cemetery burial. Lots of environmental impact, including mowing the grave. So, a green burial can lessen the impact, but perhaps not ever eliminate all impacts it looks like. Some religions like Judaism prohibit cremation; the body must be left intact. The body is mostly water and I believe about 11% carbon, so there is a carbon sequestration impact here that has to be considered the study does not appear to take into account. Anyway, if you’re concerned about funeral impact from an environmental standpoint, this is a good study to look at. The funeral industry would love to sell you a mahogany coffin so you can not only go with the most environmental impact, but take a little piece of the rainforest down with you when you go, why don’t you.
great study, thank you for the link. I had never heard of either cryomation and resomation, but I think its important to evaluate every option. I completely agree that some within the funeral industry just would like to sell you a giant casket and bury you inside a sealed cement vault. But I think the interest in green burials are growing. Today, there are over 200 funeral homes that offer some type of green burial service. Hopefully, this will be a trend that continues to grow in the future.
I wonder how receptive people have been to the idea of either being freeze-dried or dissolved using acid….
The majority of environmental conversations focus on the impact that human life has on the planet, not human death. Yet is it enlightening to see how even after we are gone, our bodies still continue to place a burden on the earth. Few people are aware of the harsh impact that traditionally burials or cementations have on the environment, and the movement towards green burials is something that should be supported by burial services. While some may shy away from the idea of a green burial, to me this seems like an innovative new approach to death, one that intertwines the idea of new life into a traditionally morbid event.
I am a graduate student studying environmental science & management. This is my 6th year taking environmental related courses, and never has a professor addressed this issue. I think this a widely ignored issue, mostly because of the knee-jerk resistance to talk about death. While it is not the most cheery subject, I agree that by raising awareness about the impact burials have, more people may choose to go the non-traditional route.
Thanks for your post!
This was a very insightful post. We often think about the lifecycle of all the products around us, but rarely look at ourselves to see what impact our bodies have on the environment after we pass away. These are inspiring alternatives!
This post also makes me think about all the toxins we are consuming from our food.
Thanks for the insightful post and comments. I recently learned about a Youtube web series called Ask A Mortician. The whole purpose behind the web series is getting comfortable asking questions and preparing for death. The creator also believes that we should be more active in the role of death and not just pass it off to the Funeral home. I think especially people interested in “green” and alternative burials could lead the way in asking for new options. We can ask to be involved in different ways from planting a tree to picking green caskets.
Brielle, I think this is a great idea. How do you think we can generate more buzz about this issue and get people thinking about post-life choices?
Wait until you get older like me; I guarantee you’ll figure it out.
An idea {perhaps out of the box and off the wall} but how about “supercooling” the body and ceremoniously blasting the ice with sound waves to create water vapour. The water would then be immediately available to nature and thereby positively contribute to the cycle of life.
Thank you very much for this post, Miranda. As others have mentioned, I too have studied environmental science in college and graduate school and this is a topic that has never been explored in coursework. We are so focused on the impacts we have on our planet during our time here that we often forget what we might leave behind. It is wonderful to hear there are other options, particularly one that even supports biodegradation beneficial to the soil and land. It is a little disheartening to hear that many places won’t offer greener opportunities, but with more than 200 that do it is clearly slowly but surely catching on. I have also previously seen ads for green funeral companies that stick with traditional funeral and burial procedures, but do so as sustainably as possible. The opportunity to choose green burials will also likely relieve some of the financial burdens placed on families associated with burial.
The New York Times published an article on green caskets and also presents some of the information shared in this post here: http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/30/into-the-big-green-beyond/
It will be interesting to see how green burials work with some religious affiliations with strict ceremonial burials. Will religious ceremonies adapt to green burial opportunities and compromise, or will we continue to see a widening range of how processes that deal with our remains?
Not to burst anyone’s bubble about green burials, by the time you die, you have a body burden of 700 toxic chemicals (http://www.chemicalbodyburden.org/whatisbb.htm). So just burying the human body in the ground may not in fact be as green as one thinks, but be another pollution burden, since the decomposition of these chemicals may vary and some be persistent in the environment forever. Further study may be needed to determine what is really a “green” burial, but complete elimination of the body and its residues from the face of the earth to the maximum extent possible may in fact be the greenest burial. Preserving your DNA, funding a perpetual Internet memorial, then encapsulating remains in the form of ashes or other residues and marking that site with a plaque may be the green way to go.
Hi Mark,
While I think this is a good point, but knowing the concentrations of the toxic chemicals within your body is critical. Perhaps a screening of the specific chemicals for a particular individual would be required, and researchers could ensure that the person would not upset the cemetery’s surrounding ecosystems.
-Miranda
Just a quick add-on to my previous comment. The formaldehyde and other preserving chemicals that are injected into bodies under conventional practices pose major risks to humans and the environment. Despite the hope that a body can forever be locked behind a vacuum-sealed wall, eventually the tomb will decay and these compounds do not easily break down, so we are just prolonging the inevitable.
(http://cfpub.epa.gov/ncer_abstracts/index.cfm/fuseaction/display.abstractdetail/abstract/2316/report/0)
Miranda, did you ever see the movie “Joe Versus the Volcano” with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan?
Edward Abbey, the famous author and environmentalist, told his friends that “I want my body to help fertilize the growth of a cactus or cliff rose or sagebrush or tree.” A couple laws were disregarded, but his friends were able to carry out his wishes. Lawfulness aside, it’s clear he understood the ecology of life and death–that the end of one thing can be the beginning of another. We try so hard to wall ourselves off from the rest of nature, and concrete-walled burials are just another way we try to do this. Our current burial practices are a symptom of our general estrangement (and, really, fear of) nature. The actual pollution or waste aside, it’s just sad that we can’t even complete the cycle from “dust to dust,” because we are so fearful of natural processes that we have to wall ourselves off from them. These green burial practices really seem like a step back towards understanding our place as just one link in the circle of life. If we can understand that place, sustainability will definitely follow!
Karen Thompson Walker, a literary expert, recently gave a TED Talk about the top 10 classic fears found in literature (http://blog.ted.com/2013/01/02/the-top-10-classic-fears-in-literature/). Above and beyond all other 9 categories was death. Not too far down the list was avoiding death for the wrong reasons illness/disease/aging. As I watched this video, I couldn’t help but think about how I feel when I am afraid. Nervous and shaking, I always just wish to be at home with my family.
If children grow up and do not spend time outside, it is difficult to not be fearful of nature. When thinking about death, their is an innate fearful reaction. In that emotional state, it might be difficult to consider a green burial option when it is completely outside someone’s comfort zone.
This was very interesting, thank you for the post and all the comments. As someone who has lost one set of grandparents and the other set is ailing, this subject has been on my mind more and more. I have always been partial to the idea of returning to the earth instead of being locked in a box forever, and I had always believed that the only option was cremation. Green burials are something that should be common knowledge as another alternative, maybe its not the right, end-all alternative, but it seems to be a step in maybe the right direction.
No matter what kind of burial we choose, we’ll always remain part of the physical universe if only as a quark, gluon or dark matter, or perhaps if not matter then energy. I can’t explain why, but that comforts me. Even if the universe stops expanding, collapses and has another big bang, we’ll still be a part of it. I guess like the “dust to dust” phrase in the Book of Common Prayer, someone was thinking physics even if they didn’t know it. Green is bigger than all of us.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…or, should you choose, dust to…coral! Another alternative to green caskets is becoming part of an artificial coral reef, much like what Mark, the first commenter mentioned. Eternal Reefs (http://www.eternalreefs.com/) facilitates the process, and I think it is a wonderful idea. Being able to help sustain life, even in death, is such a moving thought to me, and a way to leave an even bigger imprint on the Earth. We’re losing coral reefs at such alarming rates, and with disastrous consequences, that facilitating the recreation of these marine habitats is essential for so many reasons (storm protection, biodiversity maintenance, and more). How touching would it be to know that your loved one is helping sustain an ecosystem?
Funerals and death services are quite an industry, and I’m sure changing the traditions and thoughts involved will be difficult, but it is heartening to know that there are many options for those wishing to reduce impacts and truly aid in the life cycle of returning to the nature from whence we came.
Yes, Eternal Reefs started in Atlanta, which is where I live and heard about them. Since then, the Neptune Society has a variety of ocean burial options.
Great topic! I’m so glad to see the options are expanding for low-impact funerals. Modern burial has a heavy environmental footprint – some say that every year embalming fluid that could fill eight Olympic swimming pools is put into the ground (the chemicals then leache into soil and groundwater) along with large steel coffins and their brass handles, engraved plates, adjustable beds, padded cushions, and silk or nylon linings – it’s essentially mortuary landfill. When I was researching my book, Making an Exit, I came across everything from furniture that can later be adpated to become your coffin to woodland burial sites where there are no headstones and they allow no embalming fluid and only biodegradable coffins (in one place they bury you with a GPS tracker so relatives and friends can find the grave when they visit). Personally, I like the “Ikea” version – the EveryBody Coffin comes as six flat precut pieces of recycled strawboard that are easy to assemble in a matter of minutes.
It’s happening in the US but has really taken off in Japan.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/13/fashion/baby-boomers-are-drawn-to-green-and-eco-friendly-funerals.html?_r=0
Here are some links to recent stories:
and-eco-friendly-funerals.html?action=click&module=Search®ion=searchResults%230&version=&url=http%3A%2F%2Fquery.nytimes.com%2Fsearch%2Fsitesearch%2F%3Faction%3Dclick%26region%3DMasthead%26pgtype%3DHomepage%26module%3DSearchSubmit%26contentCollection%3DHomepage%26t%3Dqry25%23%2Fgreen%2520funeral&_r=0
http://www.japantrends.com/shukatsu-prepare-death-coffin-experience/
I’ve begun to plan so my own situation will be really unique.
While there appear to be an increasing number of environmentally friendly vessels one can be buried in (I rather fancy Poetree an Urn that allows you to plant a tree from ashes – http://www.treehugger.com/sustainable-product-design/poetree-a-funeral-urn-that-lets-you-plant-a-tree-from-ashes.html ) – the stickler is that you may not have any place to go!
The truth is there still are not a whole lot of Cemeteries across the US that even have areas designated for eco or green burials which is a dang shame! I recall reading a while back that the UK and Canada have far more options for green burials. A look at the Green Burial Counsel website: http://www.greenburialcouncil.org/finding-a-provider/ enables you to search for an approved cemetery – and as you will see from the drop down list, it’s still quite limited. There may only be one approved cemetery in an entire state and you need to ask lots of questions. You may find a green funeral provider – but if there is no green cemetery to place you – what then??
Just came across a site called a GreenerFuneral.org – http://agreenerfuneral.org so that may offer more info and or some updated options. But again, you really need to do some research.
We really should have more of a say to be placed into the Earth as simply as possible and land be designated to do just that. I much rather have a tree growing from where I am placed than a slab of stone. However, funerals are a HUGE business/industry. And sadly not all are legit – which is a whole other topic. Very sad when investigators show up at your door to tell you that who you think may be in your Urn may be someone else entirely. YES that happened to a dear friend of mine.
This sheds some light on green burials and is from Scientific American:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wg2A9iAe25c
I prefer to think of myself as always being part of the universe, existing as dark matter.
Here are some companies that will actually turn you into a product after you die, including a diamond. For all the ladies who didn’t learn how to make jewelry, make enough of it, or make it correctly during your lifetime, here’s your chance:
http://gizmodo.com/7-things-you-can-make-out-of-yourself-when-you-die-1649120529