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.
The business has about 300 clients a year and about 95 per cent will take the cardboard box over a casket.
Cremation is growing in popularity and now takes place in almost half the funerals in Ontario.
Atkinson said the trend is driven by many factors including lower cost and simplicity compared to a the traditional funeral.
He some folks think cemeteries are a waste of land and caskets as a waste of trees.
“They say ‘why buy a big fancy casket just to bury it?’ They see it as another piece of furniture,” he said.
They also see nothing natural in burying an embalmed body two metres deep in a lacquered coffin and a reinforced concrete vault.
Paul Needham of Westview Funeral Chapel in London said the topic of environmentally-friendly funeral has rarely come up in his 20 years in the business.
But Needham said families have more options these days. He said clients can choose to skip embalming if there is no public viewing. They can also choose an environmentally-friendly casket and not use a concrete vault.
“If you believe it’s a question of returning the body to Mother Earth - then don’t get a vault,” said Needham.
But for more ardent environmentalists, neither a traditional casket funeral or cremation is good enough.
They argue that crematory chambers are gas and electricity guzzlers reaching temperatures of 1,000 degrees for at least an hour for each body. One British group estimated that is as much as energy as a home would use in a month.
And although although crematories are required to use scrubbers on their exhausts to prevent the release of dioxins and mercury from tooth fillings, there is concern some gets through.
The new environmentally-friendly alternative is green burials Green burials involve no embalming, no vault and a biodegradeable casket buried in a eco-friendly cemetery.
A handful of “green burial” cemeteries have been established in the United States.
Although there are no green burial cemeteries in Canada yet, Phil Screen, president of the Ontario Funeral Service Association said the “green burial” trend will probably work its way north.
“There’s a much wider spectrum of choices for families these days,” said Screen.