The Centre for Natural Burial

By KEITH J. O’CONNOR, The Republican

Pease and Gay Funeral Home in Northampton offers a “green” burial as one of its many package options. And Jim Gay would love to be able to deliver on that option. There’s only one problem.

“Nobody’s been able to utilize it yet … it’s getting a cemetery to accommodate it,” Gay said.

Environmental journalist Mark Harris, who authored a book on green burial and is helping to spread the word about the merits of an environmentally friendly burial, will deliver a keynote presentation on natural alternatives to the modern funeral at the annual meeting of the Funeral Consumers Alliance of Western Massachusetts on Sunday .

“The demographics are right for this change, and the people largely pushing it are members of the baby boom generation. They’re the same folks who ushered in Earth Day, natural childbirth, pushed for organic foods in the grocery store, and who feel this same environmental consciousness should be brought to bear on end of life issues,” he said.

The event, which is free and open to the public, will be held at the Hotel Northampton at 2 p.m.

“Green burials are the most ecologically friendly way of disposing of your body,” said Carol Coan, trustee of the Funeral Consumers Alliance of Western Massachusetts. The group is a non-profit organization that assists families to choose “meaningful, dignified and affordable funeral arrangements.”

Coan heard Harris speak at her organization’s national meeting in June and said she was impressed with his knowledge on the subject.

“Green burials look to return one’s remains to the elements, as directly and simply as possible,” said Harris, author of “Grave Matters: A Journey Through the Modern Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial.”

“Avoiding chemical embalming and fancy caskets, elaborate and costly funerals, it takes a natural, economic and highly personal approach to death and burial that was once standard practice in this country.”
Harris’s presentation includes a visual tour of the country’s growing green burial movement. Drawn from his research and travels, his images of natural funerals include those that take place in backyard grave sites, at sea and in “natural” cemeteries.

Harris wrote about a half-dozen green cemeteries in the United States in his book, and said since that time the number has increased to about 20, noting none are located in Massachusetts.

“I visited Ramsey Creek Preserve outside of Westminster, South Carolina, which was the first green cemetery I had ever been to and while waking through it I was really quite moved by what struck me personally as a very powerful idea - that while death is sad and a loss, here was something that could be a very positive thing in terms of perpetuating the life cycle,” said Harris.

In an ecological cemetery, the deceased are interred in a cloth shroud or in simple coffins of cardboard or pine. Bodies are then laid to rest in a vault-free grave marked by a headstone of native fieldstone set flush to the ground.

Harris also surveys funeral homes about burials via memorial reef ball, a honeycombed dome that contains the deceased’s ashes. After curing, the reef ball is then dropped into the ocean onto an established artificial reef site, where it serves as a habitat for fish.

Archival photographs show early American funerals and their progression to the more involved sendoff of today. By way of contrast, Harris considers the embalming process an environmental aftermath of the standard funeral.

“Up until the Civil War, families controlled much of the death care. But during the war when the bodies of soldiers were being sent back home to the North in hot box cars, embalming became necessary to preserve them,” Harris said.

“It was Abe Lincoln’s embalmed body on view in the White House and for travel on a funeral train that really helped sell the practice, which is not required by law today,” he added, and which laid the groundwork for the modern funeral industry of today.

Are funeral directors ready to make the change?

Harris, who said he has talked to “quite a number of funeral directors, noted there is “not one single reaction that characterizes them on the subject.”

“I would say the funeral industry recognizes green burial is an idea whose time has come, and they can fight it as some did with cremation, and deny it is going to come, but I think they will do so at their own peril,” Harris said.

“I have been in touch with quite a number of funeral directors who recognize if they want to cater to the families of tomorrow, they would be well advised to add green burials to their packages,” he added.

After his presentation, Harris will speak with area residents who are interested in starting a green cemetery in the Pioneer Valley. He’ll also be available to sign his book.

Harris is a former environmental columnist with the Los Angeles Times Syndicate. His articles and essays have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, E: The Environmental Magazine, Reader’s Digest, and Hope. He is a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists and lives in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

For more information on Harris and his book, visit online at www.gravematters.us or about the Funeral Consumers Alliance of Western Massachusetts, visit www. funeralconsumerswmass.org