Death Wish
Green burials ensure folks live an eco lifestyle—even in the afterlife.
By Alison Sherbach, Plenty Magazine
Four miles off the highway, up a hill, and at the end of a tree-lined gravel road in the quiet town of Newfield, NY sits a pistachio-colored cottage. The small, solar-powered building resides in a pleasant meadow, and nearby are nine mounds covered in pine boughs. A path, speckled with the beginning blooms of wild strawberries, winds through the property. This isn’t a vacation home or scenic country cabin, it’s Greensprings Natural Cemetery. But here, the usual cemetery sites—trimmed lawns, engraved tombstones, plastic wrapped flowers—are nowhere to be found. That’s because Greensprings is a site for natural or “green” burials—the people who choose this cemetery are assured that when their bodies are returned to the earth, little else will be left behind.
Like most aspects of modern life, death rituals have become highly synthetic affairs. Embalming fluid is comprised mostly of formaldehyde, a toxic substance regulated by the EPA and labeled as a carcinogen by the World Health Organization. Cremation releases somewhere between 1,000 and 7,800 pounds of mercury into the air each year.
“Each year, almost 900,000 gallons of formaldehyde-based embalming fluids are buried in the ground, as well as enough cement to construct a two-lane highway from New York to Detroit,” says Joe Seehee, the founder and executive director of the Green Burial Council.
And, he adds, Americans bury more metal in a given year than the amount used to build the entire Golden Gate Bridge. Truly natural burials, on the other hand, leave a much smaller footprint: The deceased are typically placed in a biodegradable casket or simple shroud, and using refrigeration instead of embalming to preserve the body. The bodies are buried in vault-free graves on a conservation ground or in a woodland setting. And while a typical funeral plus burial will cost about $10,000 dollars, a natural burial option will usually only cost between a few hundred to a couple thousand dollars.
“By returning the body to the ground, you’re preserving land, nourishing soil, and using less space and fewer resources,” says Mark Harris, author of Grave Matters: A Journey Through the Modern Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial. “So there are clear environmental benefits.”
And while this process may seem like a new idea, Harris says that a hundred years ago, interment methods in the United States were similar to the simple, green burials at Greensprings. “The carpenter would make a plain pine box and then a family member would dig the grave,” Harris says. “There was no chemical embalming of the remains–just a body confined to the earth, returned to the earth.”
Natural burial is not the only green option. Other choices include cremation, home burials, or a burial at sea. One of the most creative forms of natural death is the reef ball–a method where one’s cremated remains are mixed with cement and then set in a honeycombed dome. This “ball” is deposited on the ocean floor, where it serves as a pseudo reef for marine life to live on.
While the thought of spending eternity as a home to clown fish and sea urchins may seem strange to some, to others, it’s comforting. “I think there is something within us that makes us want to get in sync with the cycle we see all around us,” says Seehee. “When you look out at nature, what do you see? You see that death is a part of life, it is natural.” Johnson happens to agree. Standing at the top of a hill, she looks over the grounds and smiles. “I could stay up here forever” she muses.
And perhaps one day, she will.