Resources and Information Supporting Green Burial in North America
Latest installment in green lifestyle stories urges making one’s final decision earth-friendly.
By Jeff Poor, Business & Media Institute
The media have been all over stories of eccentric families’ toilet paperless lifestyles and their green weddings, but now CNN has pushed the peripheries of ecological awareness to the end of life by making the case for a green funeral.
Say No to Trash (blog)
The effect mainstream funeral practises have on the earth is something I had thought a little about but never really researched. I knew the embalming chemicals were bad news, not to mention the space bodies take up in the earth, so I wondered about cremation and if that was any better. According to the article on the Soko, not really.
Newfield cemetery takes unconventional approach to burials.
Back The entrance sign says “Greensprings Natural Cemetery.”
But where are the grave stones, mausoleums, well-manicured grassy plots and paved roads? The place looks more like a farmer’s field than a cemetery.
Jen Baról, The Albuquerque Tribune
Theresa Doyle was an independent woman, an unconventional woman, a free-thinker who taught her children to question society and not to settle for its norms. She was also a quiet, rural woman whose life followed a simple philosophy: cherish your privacy and take care of your own business.
So it only made sense that when Doyle died in November, her children would handle the funeral arrangements themselves rather than going through a funeral home.
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.
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.