The Centre for Natural Burial

TAIPEI, CNA

As people attach more and more importance to the concept of a sustainable environment, more are embracing “green” burials, with Taipei recording 630 such burials so far, funeral operators said yesterday.

The operators said the “green,” or natural burial, ensures that the burial site remains as natural as possible. Currently, there are three forms of such burials — burying urns of ashes under trees, sprinkling ashes around a park and sprinkling ashes at sea.

They said that in 2005, 399 urns were buried under trees in public cemeteries in Taiwan, while 48 sets of ashes were sprinkled.

The Futeh Public Cemetery is currently the main site for tree burials, with about 200 pings (one ping equals 3.3 square meters) set aside for the purpose.

The Taipei city government is also planning to set up tree burial sand ash-sprinkling sites in a public cemetery on Yangmingshan.

They said that to promote green burials, the city government has also planned a four-hectare site for tree burials or ash-sprinkling in Futehkeng Park in Neihu, suburban Taipei, adding that 1.5 hectares of the site was inaugurated in May.