Resources and Information Supporting Green Burial in North America
By: Kelli B. Kavanaugh, metromode
Driving north from the skyscrapers and stadiums of downtown Detroit to Upland Hills Farm, just north of Rochester in Addison Township, is a study in quick transitions: from urban core to suburban sprawl to rolling pastures and forests in just 45 minutes.
By Jonathan Dawson, Newstatesman
There are few surer ways to understand how a culture ticks than to look how it deals with death. In Africa, where I spent much time in the 20 years before coming to live here in Findhorn, the veils that separate the realms of the living and of the ancestors are thin and people pass easily between them.
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.
The Shropshire Star
At her funeral parlour in Ludlow, she says her final send off will reflect her life: “green” and fun.
By Kiliii Dreaming // Native Ways Photography
I don’t normally post photos from my commercial shoots, but this one seemed appropriate as the theme is ‘Green Burial’: simply allowing people to rest in peace in way more sacred than being placed in a plastic bag never to decompose. Working in the studio always reminds me how much I love to work with the control of light, though natural light can of course produce equally amazing results.
By Bridget Wayland, Harrowsmith Country Life Magazine
You recycle. You carpool. You go organic. If you re an ecoconscious person, you try to minimize your impact on the planet every chance you get. How ironic, then, if all the virtuous principles you lived by get overturned in the end-the very end.
By Jonathan, Move Blog
On no subject are our ideas more warped and pitiable than on death. Instead of the friendly union, of life and death so apparent in Nature, we are taught that death is an accident, a deplorable punishment for the oldest sin, the archenemy of life.
But let children walk with Nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life, and that the grave has no victory, for it never fights. All is divine harmony.
-John Muir from A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf
Michael d’Estries - ecorazzi
While Anna Nicole Smith took the traditional road of embalming and a hardwood casket, Rachel McAdams is saying no to the glamour and expense of modern burial and opting to go green. (more…)
Eco-friendly burials eschew headstones, embalming and pricey caskets made from exotic imported wood
By Nancy J. White, Toronto Star
Imagine a gently sloping hill covered with fallen leaves, green ferns and bright wildflowers, the branches of sturdy oaks and maples arching overhead. Birds chirp in the trees. Squirrels and chipmunks scamper on the ground.
Now imagine yourself buried underneath.