Green Burials

Green burials use environmentally friendly techniques to dispose of bodies and minimize the financial costs associated with funerals. In general, green burials require biodegradable coffins or shrouds if anything is used to cover the body at all. Burial sites are planted with native plants, grasses, and trees. Any practice or substance considered polluting or unnatural is discouraged. Allowing the body to decompose naturally while using as few resources as possible is the goal.

Green burials can take place at one's home, in conventional cemeteries that support such practices, or in green cemeteries. Green cemeteries require biodegradable substances to be used on and around the body; they do not allow embalming or vaults. Such graveyards create and maintain native plant ecologies. They do not use pesticides [Page 528]or fertilizers. Aiming for a native habitat appearance, artificial markers such as engraved headstones are not permitted nor are lawns planted and maintained. Other terms used to describe green burials are natural burials, woodland burials, and ecological burials.

Green burials challenge the environmental costs of contemporary funeral practices. Conventional burials put toxic substances such as embalming fluid (which contains formaldehyde) and natural resources such as hardwoods, steel, copper, and bronze into the ground. Furthermore, the use of pesticides, fertilizers, and lawnmowers to maintain conventional cemeteries pollute soil, water sources, and air. Even cremation, a source of body removal that impacts the environment less than conventional burial practices, uses energy resources to incinerate bodies in addition to being a source of mercury and carbon emission. Although cremation can be used in green burials, it is considered less ecological than natural decomposition.

Green burials also confront the high costs of conventional burials. The National Funeral Directors Association estimates that the average cost of a funeral in the United States was $6,500 in 2004. This figure does not include payment for a cemetery plot or other cemetery fees.

History of Green Burial Movement

The contemporary green burial movement has its roots in the United Kingdom. Three psychotherapists—Nicholas Albery, Josefine Speyer, and Christianne Heal—founded the Natural Death Center in 1991. Inspired by the natural birth movement (with its emphasis on home births and family participation), Albery, Speyer, and Heal wondered if there was a more natural way to die than in a hospital surrounded by noise and machines or being embalmed and buried in suburban-style graveyards. The Natural Death Center provides information on how to arrange inexpensive, family-organized, and environmentally friendly funerals.

Ken West created the first natural burial ground in Carlisle, Cumbria, in the United Kingdom in 1993. The Carlisle burial ground aids conservation efforts by planting a locally grown oak tree on each grave. Family members are usually present at the tree planting. No gravestones or markers are used in the burial ground. Instead, names are placed on a wall at the perimeter of the woodland burial area. Such practices thus maintain local habitats and involve families in conservation efforts.

In 1994, the Natural Death Center started the Association of Natural Burial Grounds, an organization that promotes the creation and implementation of natural burial grounds. The United Kingdom movement highlights the use of burial grounds to create woodlands in part to conserve land in the face of continuing development. It has not, however, created standards of certification for burial grounds.

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