Resources and Information Supporting Green Burial in North America
Eco-friendly dying
By Peter Hadzipetros, CBC News
You’ve done your bit for the environment during your lifetime - minimizing to whatever extent possible your consumption of non-renewable resources and your discharge of stuff that is bad for the air we breathe and the water we drink.
By Allison Jones, Canadian Press
TORONTO (CP) - Cycling to work, using energy-efficient appliances and light bulbs, eating organic food - Canadians are trying harder these days to be conscientious consumers.
But amid all this green living, just how green a legacy will we leave in death?
By HANK DANISEWSKI, SUN MEDIA
Some Londoners are opting for the simplest funeral possible - being cremated in cardboard box - a recycled cardboard box that sells for $195.
Dan Atkinson of London Cremation Services said environmental concerns are a growing issue as people plan their final exit.
“It comes up all the time when people make their arrangements,” he said.
By A.J. Nelson, Reporter-Times.com
MORGAN COUNTY
The “green” burial might be catching on as a fad in some parts of the country, but local funeral directors are getting few requests for such an older way to inter the dead.
By Laura Shinn, Willamette Week Online
Some of us want a stylish sendoff to the afterlife. Let’s take Anna Nicole Smith, for example: She was laid to rest in a made-to-order pink couture gown inside a mahogany casket draped with a pink-sequined cover adorned with feathers and—you guessed it—pink ribbon. But we’re willing to bet those sequins will still be there in 2056. Beautiful (if that’s what you call it)? Yes. Sustainable? Not so much.
By Global Cool
A reproductive biologist is urging the dead to join the battle against global warming by persuading their families to opt for eco-burials over cremations.
The Shropshire Star
At her funeral parlour in Ludlow, she says her final send off will reflect her life: “green” and fun.
By: Wendy Skinner, Ithaca Times
“I was at the first Earth Day celebration, in Philadelphia … I was 11 … I had my clogs painted with the Earth Day symbol of the sun and the water and soil … I remember a lot of people, music … that whole free love, hippy, peace sign, groovy feeling. To me it felt more like a celebration and an honoring of the earth than of being worried about the earth or its survival.” Thirty-seven years later, Ithaca’s Sigrid Kulkowitz says she longs for the naïvely blissful feelings she felt in Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park, where 20,000 people gathered to show support for the environment. “I know that 11-year-olds these days, like my son, are not that fortunate.”
By Gary Smith - Active Rain Realestate Network (Blog)
Back in the “Ma and Pa Kettle” days, most rural funerals were done on the family farm. There may or may not have been a casket. But, if there was it was made of wood. Since that time, the trend in funerals has been for the remains to either be cremated or embalmed and buried. Both choices potentially pollute the earth.
By Camille Adair, A Lifelong Practice (Blog)
“One’s death should mean something.”
- Edward Abbey
Joe Sehee is executive director of the Green Burial Council, a nonprofit organization he founded to encourage sustainability in the death care industry and to use the burial process as a means of facilitating ecological restoration and landscape level conservation.