The Centre for Natural Burial

By Amber Gray, AC

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust: a saying that was true long ago. When a love one died, they were placed in the ground. Sometimes in a shroud and often with just a wooden cross as a marker. The act of burial is believed to have originated about 200,000 years ago in Africa.

This method of burial is not used much today and has been replaced by placing the remains in a wooden coffin. The body is embalmed before being placed in the coffin and then placed into the ground. Usually marked by a headstone, sometimes simple and small but sometimes quite lavish.

Some environmentalist worry that the whole embalming process could possibly be dangerous to the environment due to the toxins in embalming fluid that seeps into the ground and quite possibly into the water systems. Even cremation, which seems like a safe option still burns fossil fuel that can also be harmful. Traditional coffins are also dangerous to the environment because they contain plastic and formaldehyde glue. More expensive coffins can even be made of exotic wood that is endangered which poses it’s own dangers to our increasingly fragile eco-system.

Besides all that, doesn’t it make more sense that you should return to the earth the way you came in? Without a chipboard box and not pumped full of toxic embalming fluid, whole and natural.

A new option of burial popped up in the United Kingdom back in the 1990’s and is gaining popularity here in the states today. This is called natural burial or Green Burial. The remains are left whole and preserved without the usage of harsh toxins such as formaldehyde. They are placed in biodegradable caskets or shrouds with something simple like a tree or shrub to mark the burial site.

Embalming practices are not required in any state or providence so bodies are often preserved on dry ice. This is a much more environmentally sound alternative to embalming which introduces harmful toxics into the eco-system. The purpose of Natural Burial or Green Burial is returning to the earth all natural and giving back to the eco-system instead of destroying it.

There are almost no disadvantages to this process. The bodies naturally decompose underground so they are not smelled or seen. Being all natural, it does not intrude on the natural eco-system. The only argument one could really come up with could possibly be that fact that without a headstone you could become anonymous. This is not true though, very detailed records are kept, and there are many options on how a loved one can be memorialized. An engraved headstone may even be placed to mark the site as long as it is a flat granite stone that does not disrupt the Green burial forest.

So far, there are Green Burial sites in Washington, Texas, South Carolina, New York, Florida, and California with many more proposed sites in other states. Canada has even begun to catch on to this new trend and has proposed sites all over the country. Hopefully this with continue to gain popularity and possibly become the norm for burial everywhere.