Earth to Earth
Green cemetery proponents push ultimate act of recycling
By Pamela Marean, Standard-Times
Earth to earth. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.
So goes the traditional burial prayer.
The irony is, given the elaborate way we bury our dead today, dust won’t return to dust for a long, long time.
Now there’s a group in SouthCoast that aims to put the earth back into “earth to earth.” Call it the ultimate act of recycling. Or the eco-friendly after-life. Proponents call it the green cemetery movement.
“I like the idea of going back to nature, of leaving the Earth as close to the way it was without chemical pollutants, metals and (treated) woods that take 200 years to disintegrate. Think about clean water, clean air,” said Dr. Irene Duprey-Gutierrez, president of the Funeral Consumers Alliance of Southeastern Massachusetts, which hopes to establish a green cemetery hereabouts.
Generally, she said, traditional funeral and graveyard practices — featuring heavy-duty coffins, grave liners, embalming and the rest — “are not good for the Earth.”
Burials once were simple and biodegradable undertakings, before embalming and entombments caught on about 150 years ago. Historians point to urbanization as one reason for modern society’s change from home-based wakes and burials to today’s elaborate funeral practices.
Unlike most burial grounds, which plow under vegetation in favor of expansive lawns and rows of stone monuments, the natural landscape in a green cemetery is minimally impacted. Meadows retain their wildflowers, forests keep their trees and, though trails may be established for visitors, those interred are usually memorialized with a simple engraved fieldstone or special planting that blends into the habitat.
Bodies are buried in simple shrouds or biodegradable caskets made of paper, wicker or untreated pine. Ecopods (www.ecopod.co.uk) are burial containers made from recycled paper and enriched with nutrients to fertilize the ground in which they are buried. Cremated remains may be released into the ecosystem or buried in biodegradable urns.
If a green cemetery were established in SouthCoast, it would be one of only a handful in the United States. Though popular in Europe, the idea for conservation-conscious burial grounds is new in America, where there are only seven such cemeteries, including one in New York and two in Maine.
Traditional burial practices take quite a toll on the environment in the United States each year, said Joe Sehee of the Natural Burial Council. Almost 2.5 million Americans die annually. According to the Council, to bury them traditionally requires:
* 1,636,000 tons of reinforced concrete, required by most cemeteries to line graves — the equivalent of a two-lane highway from New York to Detroit;
* 90,272 tons of metal for coffin handles — enough to rebuild the Golden Gate Bridge;
* over 30 million board feet of hardwoods for coffins, including tropical lumbers, which are polished and then sealed with hazardous preservatives;
* and 827,060 gallons of embalming fluid (including formaldehyde, which is carcinogenic).
Dr. Duprey-Gutierrez asserts that green burial practices eliminate all of this — and much of the average $6,000 to $10,000 cost of embalming and entombment — while returning the emphasis to funeral services that are personally meaningful.
At least one green burial option is already available for some SouthCoast residents. The town of Marion provides an alternative to traditional burials at the Point Road Memorial Forest, established in 2002 through the efforts of three intrepid Marion women.The naturalized burial area is for cremated remains and is part of the town’s cemetery system.
Chrissie Bascom, Margie Baldwin and Tess Cederholm championed the project, which Mrs. Bascom described as “an efficient, inexpensive form of burial that focuses on the natural instead of man-made monuments.”
They worked closely with a landscape architect “who took inspiration from the distinctive landscape features and the native flora to create an elegant woodland place of permanent repose,” the Point Road Memorial Forest brochure states.
Donated for the purpose by Marion’s Stone family in 1994, the two acres of woodlands accommodates 56 grave sites along lightly mulched walking trails.
These sites feature engravable ground-level granite markers that look somewhat like paving stones where families of up to six members can have biodegradable urns buried. Additionally, there are hundreds of plots for urns that are unmarked but surveyed. The PRMF is also available for those who simply want to scatter ashes.
Featured is a large circular grouping of rustic granite benches where those who are interred or have scattered their remains may have their names engraved for a $100 fee plus the cost of engraving. To bury an urn costs $300. Each of the 56 grave markers are priced at $4,000 plus a fee of $300 per urn buried. All monies collected for burials are retained in a fund for maintaining the property, Mrs. Bascom said.
Establishing the Point Road Memorial Forest required “a lot of on-the-job training,” Mrs. Bascom said, as well as guidance from the town of Marion.
Though people often avoid talking about anything having to do with death, the Funeral Consumers Alliance said this is one conversation that has to start well ahead of time if a local green cemetery is to become a reality.
“Death is one of the last taboos to talk about in our society. You don’t talk about it at the dinner table,” said Dr. Duprey-Gutierrez.
FCA member Louise Sawyer agreed. “Imagine being at a dinner party and saying, ‘I just finished making my funeral plans.’ That’s when all the forks would go down.”
However, when end-of-life planning is paired with conservation efforts, Mr. Sehee said, “In that context, it’s not that icky to talk about death.
“You don’t have to get past as much when talking about ‘returning to the Earth’ because it’s part of the natural cycle of birth, death and decay.”
In fact, the concept of green burials, he said, “provides a lot of people with a lot of solace.”
The Funeral Consumers Alliance wants to hear from people interested in establishing a green cemetery. They hope for an appropriate land donation, Dr. Duprey-Gutierrez said.
Contact the FCA at (508) 996-0046 to explore the idea of creating a green cemetery in Southeastern Massachusetts. Learn more about eco-friendly burial practices at www.greenburialcouncil.org.