The Centre for Natural Burial

By Clay Evans

Boulder has a well-deserved reputation as an environmentally aware place, so we’re not surprised — but certainly pleased — that the city is a key locus for the growing “green burial” movement.

According to Boulder-based Natural Transitions, the American way of death — to cop a phrase from the late Jessica Mitford — is an environmental disaster.

“Each year, Americans bury nearly a million gallons of chemical embalming fluid along with their dead,” the group reports. “In every ten acres of cemetery land, we entomb nearly a thousand tons of casket steel, around 20,000 tons of concrete for vaults, and enough casket wood to build more than 40 homes. Modern cemetery upkeep also degrades the land, through intensive pesticide and fertilizer usage.”

We realize that complicated cultural and religious factors drive such wasteful traditions — for example, inchoate and literal, now fading, Christian interpretations of bodily resurrection. But at a time when cremation is gaining popularity, it’s frankly puzzling as to why so many of us are willing to spend so much to “preserve” our bodies once life has left them.

Enter the green burial movement, which urges people to forgo embalming, bomb-proof caskets and vaults, and to allow their bodies to return to nature as … well, as nature intended. About a dozen cemeteries around the nation are now making room for green burials, and the movement is growing quickly.

Want to know more? Check out a day-long Oct. 4 conference, “A Greener Way to the Great Beyond,” at the Unity Church, 2855 Folsom St. in Boulder. For more information, go to www.naturaltransitions.org.