Dust to Dust
Green movement progressing to cemeteries
By Karen Nugent TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF
Before the mid-1800s, families cared for their dead — holding wakes at home and burying loved ones in simple wooden caskets, often on their own property, where they could visit grave sites whenever the mood struck.
Those practices changed for several reasons, according to Mark Harris, author of “Grave Matters — A Journey through the Modern Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial.” The Industrial Revolution, Civil War and a desire for a more elite lifestyle, he said, all contributed to today’s practices of hiring a funeral director to embalm bodies, encase them in metal caskets and concrete grave vaults for burial in tightly regulated, highly manicured cemeteries.
Such newfound gentility, said Mr. Harris, included buying fancy, expensive caskets, using elaborate embalming methods — brought to the forefront by Abraham Lincoln’s funeral —and culminated in today’s $20 billion funeral industry.
Mr. Harris said a standard funeral can easily cost as much as $10,000. The average cost is $7,000 to $8,000, according to The Funeral Consumer Alliance of Eastern Massachusetts. Cremations are less expensive, from $1,000 to $3,000, but they can harm the environment by using energy and releasing dioxin and other substances. Some environmentalists say cremation also prevents nutrients in bodies from enriching the land, Mr. Harris said.
But, he said, high cost is just part of the reason more Americans are looking into natural, or green, burials, meaning no embalming and a simple wooden box made from sustainable forests, or heavy cardboard, for caskets. In some cases, there are no caskets — the body is simply wrapped in a cloth shroud, sometimes a favorite blanket or piece of clothing — and buried on private property or in one of a handful of natural cemeteries that have opened in the United States. The only one in New England is scheduled to open later this year in Maine.So-called green cemeteries are in natural, wooded settings, some with meadows, creeks and ponds. Sometimes grave sites are not marked at all; in others, flat stones, survey markers, or GPS data are used. Some allow burial without a casket, and all allow cremated remains in biodegradable containers.
Mr. Harris, a former environmental columnist for the Los Angeles Times, said that besides the financial drain of a typical funeral, the environment is damaged by today’s typical burial practices. Then there is the loss of trees from the 30 million board-feet of hardwood used for caskets each year, he said.
Valuable green space in large cities is lost, too. Besides caskets, most cemeteries require concrete or steel burial vaults around caskets to prevent the ground from sinking and interfering with lawn maintenance.
“Green burials are going to go mainstream. You will see regular cemeteries and funeral homes beginning to offer green burial goods and services,” Mr. Harris said.
It’s not happening so quickly in this state, said Nancy H. Accola, a trustee of The Funeral Consumer Alliance of Eastern Massachusetts in Boston, a nonprofit advocacy group.
“We would love to have land appropriated, and get this going,” she said.
Ernest Marriner, of The Funeral Consumer Alliance of Maine, said 13.7 acres in Orrington, Maine, south of Bangor, was donated by a family for a natural cemetery to be called Rainbow’s End.
David J. Walkinshaw, spokesman for the Massachusetts Funeral Directors Association, said that while funeral directors occasionally get asked about green burials, there are widely differing ideas about what the term actually means.
“Some people don’t want embalming, some want just a shroud, and some want a simple wooden casket,” he said, noting that the desire to hold a wake or other memorial service can change minds. Bodies that are not embalmed or cremated have to be transported and buried quickly, he pointed out.
Funeral directors are willing to explore various possibilities with families, including searching out-of-state — usually in rural areas — for cemeteries that accept burials without caskets, he said.
“Green burials for us is part of a trend — an offshoot that started 15 or 20 years ago with cremations — toward more personal options. Most people have heard about it in the national media, but they need to define in their own minds what they mean by ‘green,’ and we can explore and investigate that with them,” Mr. Walkinshaw said.
Such plans should be discussed well in advance, so funeral directors can investigate possibilities, he said. Rules regarding vaults and caskets are determined by individual cemeteries, and there are public health laws regulating burials, he said.
“Something like a simple, biodegradable casket, with no embalming, is easily accomplished, and we encourage people to call a funeral director and ask,” Mr. Walkinshaw said.
In 2006, the Brimfield Cemetery set aside a small area for the burial of cremated remains in a biodegradable cloth. So far, no one has been interred in the Memorial Garden section, according to Laurel M. Prescott of the Brimfield Cemetery Commission.
All recent burials have been full burials in family plots or full burials in newly purchased lots, she said.
The only cost for a burial of cremated remains in Brimfield would be a nominal charge for staff to open and close the grave.
A similar memorial garden is in Longmeadow at the First Church of Christ, where the cremated remains of several people are buried.
For centuries, Cistercian monks have practiced green burials. A deceased monk’s body is lowered into a grave without a casket and the body is covered with dirt, according to Rev. Brendan J. Freeman, the abbot at the New Melleray Abbey in Peosta, Iowa.The monks there manufacture and sell caskets made from wood from their forests. The Cistercians also maintain a monastery in Spencer, although that monastery does not make caskets.
The first natural cemetery established in the United States — besides old Colonial-era cemeteries that predate current embalming practices — is the Ramsey Creek Preserve, started by a doctor and his wife in Westminster, S.C.
Bodies or cremated remains are buried there with or without caskets and containers. Mr. Harris said that, contrary to popular belief, caskets, and even vaults, do not prevent decaying bodies from leaking. At the 32-acre Ramsey Creek Preserve, owner Billy Campbell deliberately digs down 3-1/2 feet, to keep animals out. Typical state laws require that caskets be buried at least 10 inches below earth. Dr. Campbell is also careful not to damage plants and shrubs when he digs graves; he sets them aside and replants them.
Mr. Harris, whose family owned and worked at cemeteries in upstate New York for generations, first visited Ramsey Creek Preserve in 2004.
“I was struck — powerfully moved — by the feeling of how death becomes a part of life, by seeing it reflected in the cycle of nature. During the hike, we passed grave sites that I had not even known were there,” he said.
He points out in the book that South Carolina cemetery regulations are quite lax compared to those of other states.
According to regulations from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, bodies must be buried in rigid containers, which can include strong cardboard, that are lined with plastic sheeting, to prevent leakage. Ms. Accola of The Funeral Consumer Alliance stressed that embalming is not a state requirement.
While there are no public natural cemeteries in this state, she said, private cemeteries are an option, although there are requirements by health and zoning boards pertaining to distance from wells and other infrastructure.
But James G. Gardiner, Worcester’s acting commissioner of health and human services, said it would be highly unlikely for a private, backyard cemetery to be approved unless there was a huge tract of land involved.
“It’s very restrictive. You’d need a permit from the local zoning board,” he said.
Mr. Gardiner said that as far as he knows, even burials without vaults — concrete or steel grave liners — are prohibited in the city’s cemeteries, including private church cemeteries. He said burial permits in Worcester are granted for burial in approved cemeteries only. There are public health concerns, he said, about infectious agents making their way into the public water supply.
Mr. Gardiner and Mr. Walkinshaw said vaults keep cemetery grounds level for mowing. Buried caskets, they said, eventually settle and cause dips in the grass.
“Walk in any old cemetery, and you can see what happens — they really settle,” Mr. Walkinshaw said.
Contact reporter Karen Nugent by e-mail at knugent@telegram.com.