Going green beyond the grave
By Matt Hryciw, The Toronto Observer
In death, environmentally conscious Ontarians will soon have the chance to extend their green lifestyles beyond the grave. Woodlawn Memorial Park in Guelph, Ont., hopes to open a swath of environmentally friendly final resting places late next year.
The cemetery is currently in the planning stages of a ‘green’ expansion of its existing traditional burial grounds that will see the addition of plots that have minimal impact on the environment.
“Inside the 30 acres, we’re developing a green area,” said Paul Taylor, Woodlawn’s executive director. “Something that will reflect what our community thinks a green cemetery should be.”
That green cemetery will look noticeably different than the manicured lawns and upright head stones of the adjacent 50-acre memorial park.
That’s because, among other things, green graveyards don’t use potentially harmful pesticides or fossil fuel-burning lawn mowers to keep the grass green and tidy. In fact, they might not even have grass at all.
“We are developing an area that is going to be more of a natural setting,” Taylor said.
Developing a more natural setting
A natural setting is the type of cemetery landscape envisioned by Janet MCausland, hopes to open natural burial grounds in or around the city. She said people need to know that there are green alternatives to traditional funeral practices.
Natural burial grounds essentially leave the land in its natural state. That means growing low-maintenance, native plants and making unobtrusive memorials out of local rocks or indigenous trees.
Large metal or plastic coffins are also banned from graves, in favour of simple wooden caskets that more easily break down. Embalmed bodies are not allowed on the land either so that the harmful chemicals are kept out of the green grounds.
But while these earth-friendly grave sites might seem like a green no-brainer to many Torontonians, none has yet been approved in the GTA.
“Not too many municipalities are really keen on cemeteries, and to get any kind of zoning changed can take months and years,” McCausland said. “It’s a fairly complicated process.”
Complicated, she said, because it also takes a lot of money to buy an appropriate site or a co-operative willing donor to provide the land.
Suzanne Scott, executive director of Canadian Funeral Services, suggests that the slow start to set up Toronto’s first natural burial grounds also has a lot to do with demographics.
‘We’re just on the tip of the baby boomers’
“It hasn’t really become a big issue yet. And maybe that’s because the generation that’s dying isn’t as green as our (younger) generation ? they have already made their plans.
So until the next generation is making their arrangements, we probably won’t see a big impact, which gives these cemeteries time to create a green portion or whatever they want to have available.”
She predicted that as the population ages, so should the demand for natural burials. “Keeping in mind the generation of people we’re burying, we’re just on the tip of the baby boomers. They will probably be the ones who have the same impact they’ve all their lives.”
There are very few people who will have a completely neutral impact on the environment when they die. But MCausland said that every little bit we can do in death helps.
“You can drive a Hummer or you can walk, and I think in between there are a lot of different options,” she said. “In parallel, you can choose to be cremated, you can choose to be buried naturally, or you can choose to be put in a big casket in a crypt with a big headstone.”
Which is similar to Taylor’s environmental philosophy at Woodlawn. Although the memorial park won’t necessarily follow the rules laid out by the Natural Burial Association, it will try to offer the choice of an attractive green burial alternative by incorporating many of the green suggestions put forth by local residents.
“I always refer to it as a shade of green,” he said. “We are going to develop the Guelph shade of green, because there are so many different shades of green out there, we want a shade that will suit our community.”