Funerals

Funerals are the final acts of individual consumption. Environmental impacts include consumption of various resources (especially wood, metal, stone, concrete, and land), pollution (embalming fluids, mercury, and other heavy metals), and energy use (cremation, concrete manufacture, mowing of cemeteries, and travel to funeral and memorial services). Greener alternatives are increasingly offered, particularly by organizations outside the traditional funeral industry.

Several Websites, including Green Funeral Guide, state that U.S. funerals—more resource-intensive than those in other nations—annually use

• 30 million board feet (70,000 m3) of hardwoods (caskets),
• 90,272 tons of steel (caskets),
• 14,000 tons of steel (vaults),
• 2,700 tons of copper and bronze (caskets),
• 1,636,000 tons of reinforced concrete (vaults),
• 827,060 gallons (3,130 m3) of embalming fluid.

The director of the Green Burial Council (GBC) estimates that the typical 10-acre cemetery contains enough casket wood to build 40 homes and enough embalming fluid to fill a typical backyard swimming pool. He suggests that the amount of concrete and steel associated with U.S. burials each year is equivalent to that in the Golden Gate Bridge.

Caskets (coffins) are made of various materials and contain an outer shell and an interior cloth liner. Approximately 75 percent of U.S. caskets are steel, manufactured using automobile assembly line techniques and having similar environmental impacts. Burial vaults and liners are used—predominantly in the United States—to prevent crushing of the casket and subsidence. The concrete typically used is extremely energy intensive to produce. Land set aside for traditional cemeteries and the stone or metal in grave markers and monuments are additional concerns.

Pollution concerns center around the widespread use of embalming fluids, including formaldehyde and other materials designed to disinfect and sanitize the body and slow decomposition. Embalming is commonly done to allow time for friends and family to gather and to permit open-casket viewings. Formaldehyde, although naturally produced by the human body, is a widely used industrial chemical and a suspected nasal and lung carcinogen. Direct exposure can cause effects on the immune system. Risks are mainly to mortuary workers, with possible effects on soil bacteria in cemeteries from eventual leakage. Embalming fluids are released as air pollution when cremated bodies are embalmed to be preserved for a funeral service. Other sources of pollution include mercury from amalgam fillings and other heavy metals from biomedical and electronic devices, such as cell phones placed with the deceased; these pollutants are released more widely and immediately in the case of cremation. U.S. cremations are estimated to release between 1,000 and 7,500 pounds of mercury per year. Although cremation has a higher immediate carbon footprint than burials, long-term cemetery maintenance—water, pesticides, fertilizers, and mowing—and periodic graveside visits mean a larger footprint for burials.

Greener funeral options are increasing. Removal of teeth with fillings before cremation reduces mercury pollution. “Clean cremation” employs a small pine, cardboard, or wicker coffin with a natural fabric liner. Cremation remains can be kept in [Page 168]an urn, scattered, buried in a shallow grave, or incorporated in a permanent structure such as Eternal Reef's “reef balls”—hollow-form structures used in reef restoration programs, providing a footing for marine coral species. Reef ball locations can be documented and “visited” using global positioning system and underwater video camera technologies.

...