The Centre for Natural Burial

By MATT RILKOFF - Taranaki Daily News

Judy Martin wants a “natural” burial so she can rot right down without any fuss when she dies.

Unfortunately the closest place the New Plymouth woman can have a fast-rot burial is in Makara, near Wellington, a 4 1/2 drive for any family wishing to pay their respects.

In a “natural” burial bodies are placed in untreated wooden caskets, buried to about half the depth of a traditional grave and are not treated with embalming fluids.

Instead of a headstone the grave is marked by a native tree.

The country’s first natural burial was in Makara last Friday.

Mrs Martin (71) now wants a natural burial ground made available in Taranaki to stop environmentally conscious citizens leaving the province upon death.

“I’m not waving a flag for natural burials.

“I really just want it as an option for myself and anyone else who prefers it. It is much more pleasant to be buried in a beautiful forest than in a grid pattern of gravestones.”

She says the burials are more environmentally friendly as bodies decompose in the soil, providing fertiliser for the tree planted on top of them.

After a few decades the burial ground is unrecognisable from a forest.

“If there is any support from people for such a cemetery I suppose I would be happy to help organise them and go to the council with a proposal,” she said.

Mark Blackham, founder of Natural Burials, an advocacy group for the promotion of natural burials said under Human Rights legislation, people had a legal right to a natural burial.

“Now that we’ve done all the work establishing the cemetery in Wellington other councils can use that as a model. Most councils these days are at least open-minded to it and we’ve found about a third of people want a natural burial option.”

He said the country’s first natural burial last Friday had convinced him it was the way to go.

“It just seemed so utterly the way it should be done.

“It was just so natural. It wasn’t contrived at all. In conventional funerals you have machines to lower the coffin down and other artificial things.

“We’ve separated ourselves from the realities of death and made it all so unnatural.”

Mr Blackham said if the New Plymouth District Council wanted to start a natural cemetery it would need at least one hectare of land to accommodate an appropriate area of bush.

He said a benefit of the cemeteries was their low maintenance costs compared with regular cemeteries and the restoration of bare land to bush.

Casey Martin, managing director of Taranaki funeral service company Eagars, said it would be happy to provide a natural burial if it was available in Taranaki.

She said if families made such a choice they needed to be aware of the possible implications.

“If there is no embalming the family would have to move more quickly as the body could start to deteriorate at a faster rate than if it was embalmed,” she said.

She said a lot of people were interested in natural and environmentally friendly burials because they assumed they were cheaper but this was not always the case.

She said many expenses made up a funeral, of which the coffin and burial were only part.

Nelson’s Tasman District Council recently designated three areas for natural burials.

Reserves manager Beryl Wilkes said the council had done this to provide an extra service for residents but also because such cemeteries had lower on-going maintenance costs.

Natural cemeteries are also being set up in Wanganui, the Kapiti Coast, Christchurch and Waikumete.

NPDC parks and recreation officer Mark Bruhn said the council was aware natural burial was an emerging issue but had not yet investigated it as a possibility.