Green wake not an easy undertaking
By Joan Carreon, Herald News
With everything seemingly going green these days, why not burials? Green burials are a relatively new concept, at least for the Midwest. But that may be changing.
Green Burial Council founder Joe Sehee recently gave his first major industry presentation to Selected Independent Funeral Homes at its annual meeting at Chicago’s Fairmont Hotel.
Rather than using toxic embalming chemicals, a few funeral homes are refrigerating bodies and placing them on dry ice during public viewings.
Instead of burial vaults, which add 1.6 million tons of concrete to the earth each year, green cemeteries instead are burying bodies in biodegradable wood boxes or cloth shrouds.
Will County Coroner Patrick O’Neil went to the Internet to find out more before responding to a reporter’s questions about green burials.
“It’s really not something I’ve heard of,” said O’Neil, whose parents own O’Neil Funeral Home in Lockport.
Eugene Gerardi, owner of Gerardi Funeral Home in Frankfort and Chicago Heights, said he has not had any experience with nor has he had anyone request a green burial in the 85 years his family has been in the funeral home business.
“I know they do it out in the western states,’ he said. “but I’ve not had anyone ask about it (here).”
“There’s not a whole lot of information about it,” said Michael Sayles of Carlson Holmquist-Sayles Funeral Home in Joliet and regional director with the Illinois Funeral Directors Association.
Burial restrictions
Sayles, who also is past president of the Will County Funeral Directors Association, said he has not had anyone asking for a green burial and is not sure if any cemeteries in Illinois or the Midwest are designed to handle them.
Most cemeteries typically have certain burial restrictions and require the use of vaults in order to keep the ground stable.
“The whole idea of green burials has been primarily discussed on the East Coast and the West Coast,” said Paul Dixon, executive director of the Illinois Funeral Directors Association.
He said he thinks green burials could someday become a popular trend but would require changes to burial regulations and restrictions.
“It could alter how we view the disposition of the body,” Dixon said.
John Bucci of Wisconsin Chapels near Madison has done three green burials. While it’s the right thing to do, he said, there are drawbacks.
Without embalming, it’s more difficult to apply makeup. And, viewing should be done within 24 to 48 hours, which may be too fast for many families, Bucci said.
Sayles said he, too, can see the idea of green burials catching on. After all, 30 years ago, cremation wasn’t as popular as it is today, he said.
Mike Hickey, one of the owners of Hickey Memorial Chapel in New Lenox, said there was one time, years ago, when the funeral home was handling a burial at St. James of the Sag Cemetery and the cemetery was unable to physically get a vault to that particular burial location.
Hickey said the family, which had already opted for an oak casket for their loved one, was “delighted” by the news.
“For them, it was a positive thing,” he said.
I think this is a great trend. My understanding is that the embalming fluids actually turn a body into toxic waste.
I think this is very important from an environmental standpoint. For me, it is also an ethical question of what is best for the environment. I want my body to return to the earth — ashes to ashes, dust to dust…