Environmentalists seeking to go ‘green’ — even in funeral planning
LYNNPORT (AP) — A growing number of environmentalists are trying to go “green” even when it comes to death, planning for home funerals with handmade, biodegradable caskets.
Penny Rhodes, 64, of Albany Township, and her family washed and dressed her father’s body after he died and then wrapped him in a family quilt in his bed.
Her brother built a coffin out of plywood, and her sister gathered colorful paints for the grandchildren and others to decorate the coffin with drawings and messages.
“It feels like midwifery, but at the end of life,” Rhodes said.
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The “green burial” movement promotes natural and ecologically friendly burial practices such as using wood and other materials that decompose with the body, nourishing the soil and surrounding plant life.
“It makes sense,” said Mark Harris, a Bethlehem author who recently published a book on modern funeral practices. “It’s a return to tradition and it speaks to an old-fashioned American value, the do-it-yourself mentality.”
The book, “Grave Matters: A Journey through the Modern Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial,” explores alternatives such as cemeteries that use biodegradable caskets or shrouds.
A national group that advocates such earth-friendly practices, the Green Burial Council, now attracts nearly 120,000 hits a month on its Web site.
“People don’t really visit Web sites about death, … so that is remarkable,” said Joe Sehee, the nonprofit group’s founder and executive director.
“I think (funeral directors) recognize it’s like cremation was 30 years ago: They are going to have to get involved in it or it will pass them up,” he said.
People choose green funerals for a variety of reasons, including environmental, aesthetic and financial concerns. A do-it-yourself funeral can cost less than $2,000, while traditional funerals typically cost about $6,000, according to the National Funeral Directors Association.
Others are simply nostalgic for a time when families frequently laid out the dead at home and buried them in family cemeteries.
Arian Hungaski, a 31-year-old mother of three from Lynn Township, is planning a home funeral after attending services at which she felt the deceased — after being embalmed, made up and coifed — looked anything but natural.
“It was as if they were trying to make them look alive,” Hungaski said.