Different Shades of Green: Part 1: The Rationale for Green Burial
The term “green burial” is the funeral industry’s equivalent of the term “organic.” Nobody is quite sure what it means—and in fact, it means different things depending on where you live, the cemetery involved, the choices you make, and your philosophical orientation. Perhaps a better way to think about this is that there are green burial options, in other words, different shades of green.
While green burial is still a small part of the funeral industry, more and more people are thinking about green options. According to a March 22, 2018 article in the New York Times, entitled “Thinking about a ‘Green’ Funeral? Here’s What to Know,” 54% of Americans are now thinking about a green burial. This compares to a study done by AARP in 2007, when only 21% of Americans expressed curiosity about green burial. And an even more astounding statistic from the New York Times article is that 72% of cemeteries report increased demand for green burials, a number that comes from a survey conducted by the National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA).
As doulas, we need to stay informed about after-death care of the body, so we can provide accurate information and appropriate referrals when families ask us to help them think through or make funeral arrangements. INELDA doulas tell us that more of their clients are turning to them for help with after death care, whether that is planning for a home viewing or funeral, or considering green burial options.
In this article, the first of two on green burial, we will consider the rationale for going green after death. In next month’s Newsletter, we will print part two, covering the different green burial options, talk about the different kinds of green cemeteries that cater to this trend, and provide a list of useful resources you can investigate and share with your clients.
There really are two primary reasons people think about green burials: they understand the negative environmental impact of traditional burials and want the disposition of their body to be more eco-friendly, and/or they want their after-death care to be less costly, more pared down, less oriented to large-scale consumerism. As Joshua Slocum, Executive Director of the Funeral Consumers Alliance, a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting consumers rights around funerals, puts it: “People want another approach to burial that doesn’t reflect a capitalist industrial way of processing our dead.”
A traditional funeral starts with embalming, which mummifies the body. This is not a requirement in most states, but has become a standard practice unless the person was Jewish or Muslim, because they do not allow embalming for religious reasons. Embalming involves removing the bodily fluids and gases, and replacing blood with a formaldehyde-based solution of chemicals that preserve and disinfect the body. The United States is the only country in the world where chemical conservation of our dead is a common practice.
After embalming, the traditional funeral proceeds to placement of the body in a hardwood casket that is finished with lacquer and may have a steel lining. Some caskets are made from all steel. The inside of the casket generally has a satin or crepe lining. At the cemetery, the casket is placed in a grave that has a cement or steel vault. These vaults are not required by state laws, but most cemeteries themselves do make them a requirement. The reason is that as coffins collapse under the weight of the soil above, as well as from surface activity, the ground sinks, which would force the cemetery to perform constant maintenance to keep the ground level.
Embalming, caskets, and concrete vaults can be quite costly. The national median cost of a traditional funeral is upwards of $8,500, according to the NFDA. While in some green cemeteries the cost of the plot can be higher—due to the expense of natural conservation, which meets the philosophical goal of preservation—other costs may be lower, because of all that is left out in a green burial. iMortuary, an on-line site for funeral planning and resources says that green burial costs vary widely due to the different kinds of options people select, but that overall you can expect to save up to 50% of the cost of a traditional funeral.
More important than saving money, for many people, is the fact that green burials help save the planet. In a traditional funeral people select between a hardwood or steel casket. According to National Geographic, wood caskets require 30 million board feet (equivalent to 30 million pounds) of casket wood annually. A more recent estimate by the Green Burial Council estimates that 20 million board feet of wood is used for caskets. By either estimate this is a huge amount of wood.
Another way to look at this use of wood, according to Care2, a social networking platform for activists, is that it takes 4 million acres of trees to supply the wood used for U.S. caskets. Those trees could remove 65 million tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, according to the Berkeley Planning Journal. That is also enough wood to build 90,000 houses. Care2 also estimates that in 10 acres of cemetery there is enough casket wood to build 40 houses. The National Geological Survey estimates that there are 109,000 cemeteries in the U.S., some as big as 700-800 acres. While a large percentage of cemetery acreage may just be undeveloped land for future growth or devoted to an office, storage, and roadways, that still leaves an incredible number of acres of buried wood that leaks chemicals from the wood finishing into the soil.
The story gets even worse when we consider the other materials used annually in conventional burials. Again, according to the Berkeley Planning Journal, each year we bury 2,700 tons of copper and bronze, 104,272 tons of steel, and an astonishing 1,636,00 tons of reinforced concrete for burial vaults and caskets—material that doesn’t decompose.
In addition to the direct impact on the environment from burying these materials, you have to add in the emissions caused by cutting down the trees, transporting the wood, manufacturing the caskets, transporting the caskets, and manufacturing the cement. It’s easy to see how damaging all of this is to the environment in the U.S. and globally.
Now let’s consider the impact of the embalming fluids used in preserving bodies so they can be more pleasingly viewed at the funeral home prior to burial. According to the NFDA the funeral industry uses 827,000 gallons of embalming fluid each year. The main ingredients in these fluids are formaldehyde, glutaraldehyde, phenol, humectants, dyes, anti-edemic chemicals, and disinfectants, according to Safe Passage Urns, which offers a wide selection of cremation urns and has a guide for funeral planning.
Most people think that once an embalmed body is buried in a casket surrounded by a concrete vault, the formaldehyde and other chemicals don’t impact the environment. But over time all of those chemicals leach into the soil and waterways, contaminating them with cancer-causing agents.
Traditional burials only account for between 49-53% of the after-death care of bodies. The remaining 47-51% of people are cremated. This can be the least costly approach to dealing with our dead. It may also save a great deal on the environmental costs of producing and burying huge quantities of non-biodegradable materials. But cremation has its own negative environmental impact.
Most crematorium retorts require the burning of natural gas, thus releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, along with chemicals present in the body, such as mercury used in dental fillings as well as dioxins and furans, says SevenPonds, an online site devoted to the end of life experience. According to the United Nations 0.2% of global dioxin and furan emissions are produced by cremation, along with Sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, heavy metals and more. It can take anywhere from 45 minutes to 3 hours to fully incinerate a human body, depending on the type and age of the crematorium retort. Those retorts can reach temperatures up to 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit. Each cremation results in the release of 350 lbs. of carbon dioxide and requires an amount of fossil fuel that is equivalent to driving 4,800 miles.
In view of all the negative environmental impacts of traditional burials and cremation, green burial may be the most environmentally sound way to deal with our dead. Next month we will finish this look at green burials by exploring the various approaches to green burial and informing you about the cemeteries that offer this type of burial.