The Centre for Natural Burial

The inconvenient truth about our last rite of passage spurs a natural-burial movement
By Chris Smith, Checkerspot Magazine

Sometimes it’s the heart that is last to go, a knot of dense muscle still recognizable after the other organs have long since vaporized. Sometimes non-combustible material is found among the remains — prosthetic implants, dental filling sand unretrieved jewellery, mingling with hinges and nails from the coffin. Two hours at 900°C is usually enough to reduce us to our bare essentials, the chemicals, gases and minerals from which we originated. But some of us take longer — heavy caskets and excess body mass can extend the burning process by a couple of hours.

Despite its poetic cachet, “ashes to ashes” is an inaccurate description of the cremation process. Man-made material aside, the cremains (an industry portmanteau of “cremated” and “remains”) consist mainly of calcium phosphates from dry bone fragments, which are then crushed to a sandy texture. Our final weight is relative to our skeletal mass; still, in the end, a lifetime of experiences comes down to about three kilograms of mineral, and the memories of those we leave behind.

The human body is like that of any other creature, a biological cog in a cyclic enterprise of birth, death and rebirth. But the methods by which we inter our remains reflect our tendency to view death as a final state, an attitude manifested in our burial practices. We have come to face our natural demise in most unnatural ways, with the vast majority of us destined for one of two ends: a formaldehyde-infused corpse in a laminated coffin entombed in a cinder block vault (a futile grasp to extend our bodily presence on this planet), or a fiery evaporation into ash and nothingness (a romantic lunge at finality, hoping to disappear completely).

The growing understanding of human impact on Earth’s climate, however, has brought about an awareness of our own place within the ecosystem, and an embracing of ourselves — not just our actions, but our very bodies — as an ecological factor rather than an exception. Rather than pre-serve our bodies artificially or seek to escape our natural end, we are beginning to realize we can extend Earth-friendly lives with Earth-friendly deaths. An entire industry is surfacing in North America focused on this end — burial practices that allow us to biodegrade as plants and animals have been doing naturally for millions of years, feeding the ecosystem, rather than poisoning it.

For many years, cremation has been seen as the Earth-friendly alternative, but as the environmental movement has looked beyond the realm of acid rain and persistent organic pollutants (POPs) to focus on the larger problem of global warming, the fossil fuels consumed in cremation have begun to raise eyebrows. The exact figureson fuel consumption in crematoria vary widely based on the time a cremation takes, the type of fuel used, and the age of the technology. Until the 1960s, crematoria were fueled by either coal or oil, an expenditure of natural resources (and contributor to global warming) that was greatly reduced after the industry converted to propane and natural gas. Still, older retorts (the technical name for the cremation chamber) consume twice the energy of more modern facilities.

While improved technology is reducing the energy consumption rate of crematoria, that success is being outpaced by the increasing number of people choosing cremation as their final option. Over the past 25 years, cremations in Canada have grown roughly fivefold, from 20,000 in 1975 to just over 100,000 in 1999. According to the Cremation Association of North America, cremation rates projected for 2010 range from 33.3 percent in New Brunswick to 77 percent in British Columbia. Vancouver scores one of the highest cremation rates of any North American city.

Beyond the fossil fuels consumed in the cremation process, the reduction of the human body to cinders releases a grab bag of pollutants into the atmosphere, ranging from chemicals to heavy metals to sulfur dioxide (a source of acid rain) and carbon monoxide (a contributor to global warming). Included in this long list are dioxin, a known carcinogen, and furan. Emissions of these toxic chemicals can only rise if cremation continues its pace as the send-off of choice.

In terms of global warming and secondary environmental damage, traditional funerals are hardly a better option. Manicured expanses of headstone-pocked grass — appearing as nature-friendly as a verdant prairie — conceal a toxic soup of formaldehyde and other preservatives and disinfectants from the embalming process, which is seeping into groundwater and contaminating the surrounding soil. North America buries nearlya million gallons (four million litres) of embalm-ing fluid a year, and while studies are still being conducted on the environmental effects of the practice, mortuary chemicals have been linked to increased rates of leukemia and other cancers.

The sea of headstones at a Montreal cemetery is typical of North American graveyards.
The impact of traditional burials on global warming is more obvious when we calculate the vast amount of natural resources involved. The Natural Burial Co-operative reports that a four-hectare cemetery contains enough coffin wood to build more than 40 homes, almost a thousand tonnes of casket steel, and 20,000 tonnes of concrete, most of which is used in the construction of burial vaults — an unnecessary holdover from the 18th century used to deter graverobbers. The production of cement is a major contributor to greenhouse gases, contributing 5 to 10 percent of the global carbon dioxide emissions. Most of this comes from the need to alter the raw materials’ chemical structure, which requires heating them in a kiln at 1,500°C — nearly twice the temperature necessary for the cremation of a human body. If all the metal and concrete used in cemeteries across North America each year were put together, it would be enough to construct another Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and a four-lane highway from Montreal to Toronto. And those lawns do not manicure themselves — like any man-made expanse of perfect green, cemeteries use chemical lawn treatments involvingnitrates that further contribute to the production of greenhouse gases.

No wonder, then, that the idea of “naturalburials” is taking hold in North America. Themovement promotes chemical-free burials inbiodegradable containers to gently usher ourbodies back into the ecosystem. Buried withoutembalming fluid, laminated wood, cementchambers, and sometimes even headstone markers, bodies disintegrate into flora- andfauna-dense surroundings, not only reducing thepresence of chemical contamination and green-house gases, but providing nutrients for a healthyecosystem. Though natural burials are offered asa service by some traditional cemeteries, there isa growing impetus for entire cemeteries builtupon this concept.

Eco-friendly cemeteries, known as “natural burial grounds,” first appeared in the United Kingdom in the 1990s, and have since sprung up in North America from New York to Texas. The movement in Canada is being spearheaded by the Ontario-based Natural Burial Co-operative (www.naturalburial.coop) and the database Forest of Memories, which is building a comprehensive listing of natural burial grounds in North America, as well as information on where to find environmentally friendly caskets, shrouds and urns.

Such efforts are welcome news for the nascenteco-burial enterprise, connecting people to resources like the Natural Burial Company, founded by Cynthia Bealin Portland, Oregon. Beal — who refers to natural burials as “composting at its best” — offers a line of biodegradable coffins ranging from a $3,500 handmade recycled-paper model to a cardboard version. Though most of the caskets are still constructed in the U.K., a growing number of businesses are providing an infrastructure for the practice in the U.S.

The woods appear virtually untouched in th first natural-burial site in the United Sates.
Natural burial grounds do more than just reduce pollutants otherwise caused by cremation and traditional burials. Some eco-cemeteries function as wild spaces, marking graves with local rocks and flora rather than headstones, keeping track of burial plots through GPS locators. Rather than a chemical-dense, artificial landmark, people can visit family and friends in a wildlife preserve free of pesticides, herbicides and man-made materials, knowing that their deceased loved ones are nurturing a vibrant ecosystem rather than suspended by chemicals in a darkened tomb.

“My grandfather would have liked nothing better than to help a tree to grow,” says Allie Smith, whose family buried both her grandparents’ as he sat their cottage in British Columbia. “So we figured he could be fertilizer. I don’t need to go to a stone to talk to my dead friends or relatives. I just need to picture them. There is something so artificial about creating a synthetic box and taking up that much land.”

“We buried [his ashes] under a white pine, big and majestic like him,” she says. “He would have hated a fuss or a burial in a graveyard. He was a nature guy. He wouldn’t have wanted the weird preservation effects of a coffin.” Smith’s words echo a growing sentiment in Canada, that our efforts to preserve our environment during our lifetimes should not end with our deaths.