Nanaimo Daily News
When Mildred MacLeod dies, she says she likes the idea of returning to the earth. She imagines trees and flowers growing above her grave. “I’d like to see me being part of a natural woodlands area, where it’s peaceful, instead of being burned up,” said MacLeod, a member of the Memorial Society of B.C.
But modern funeral practices make an environmentally sensitive return to the earth virtually impossible.
A traditional burial means having your body pumped full of chemicals, placed in an expensive wooden coffin, and sealed in a concrete container in the ground.
The only alternative is to be vaporized in a crematorium: your molecules blasted into space, along with searing temperatures of 1,000 degrees F or more, carbon dioxide and other gases.
MacLeod said pumping that kind of heat and gas into the atmosphere can’t be good for it.
The Memorial Society of B.C. is therefore approaching the Regional District of Nanaimo with a proposal to create a “green burial” cemetery. If approved, it would be the first of its kind in Canada, MacLeod said.
Green burials, which are popular in England, are not only more ecologically sensitive, they are also cheaper, MacLeod said,
“I find it more natural and better ecologically,” she said. “And you save money on expensive coffins.
“Basically, it’s going back to the old fashioned way of burying, without an undertaker.”
MacLeod plans to ask the RDN’s development services committee Tuesday to seek possible locations for a green burial cemetery.
Five acres should suffice, she said, and the land in question can be bare land in need of reclamation.
In an attempt to keep graveyards even and easy to mow, the modern practice in most cemeteries is to place coffins in a concrete container. This prevents depressions in the ground forming when coffins disintegrate and collapse.
Since green burials use no concrete containers, and no wooden coffins, bodies buried there decompose quickly, and leave nothing behind but “compost.” Call it no-trace dying.
The idea behind green burial cemeteries is to plant loved ones below, and trees, flowers and shrubs above. There are no headstones, though discretely placed plaques are allowed on trees, benches, stones and memorial walls. Otherwise, the cemetery looks very much like a wilderness park.
Although popular in England, green burials are only beginning to catch on in North America.
Nanaimo Daily News
Ramsay Creek Preserve, a 32-acre for-profit cemetery in South Carolina, was the first green burial cemetery created in the U.S., according to the Memorial Ecosystems website (www.memorialecosystems.com)
Pamela Shaw, manager of community planning for the RDN, said finding a suitable plot of land may be challenging. She said many land parcels that might be suitable are in the Agricultural or Forest Land Reserve. Even if a suitable plot is found, she said “we’d need to determine from the province if this idea is even allowed.”
It is, says Mary Freeman, registrar of cemetery and funeral services for the attorney-general’s office.