The Centre for Natural Burial

Going Out Green Blogspot

Of all the considerations when planning a natural burial, picking an earth-friendly coffin is one I thought would be a cinch.

I had in mind a one of those six-sided, wooded “toe-pinchers” made popular in old western gunslinger movies. No varnish. No glue. Maybe some dovetail joints or some dowels instead of nails to hold the thing together. But going online and punching “natural burial coffin” into the search block turned up the website for The Natural Burial Company of Portland Oregon—“the foremost distributor of biodegradable coffins in North America” who also claim to have the widest selection of natural burial coffins “at the time.”

There you can see eco-friendly basket-style coffins woven with seagrass, banana leaves, willow cane, and earth-friendly bamboo. Simple pine coffins made from “wood secured from sustainable managed forests” and another called the “Everybody Coffin” made from something called “formaldehyde-free, multi-layer Ceiba Pentandra wood.” There were heavy-duty cardboard coffin boxes that store flat until needed, assemble in seconds, and are suitable for natural burial or cremation. And then there is the Ecopod, a totally biodegradable coffin made in the United Kingdom from 100-percent recycled paper and covered in “handmade paper of mulberry leaves and recycled silk” with your choice of exterior color featuring your choice of a silk-screen design (Blue-Doves, Red-Aztec Sun, and Green-Celtic Cross) that you believe defines you as a person.

Supposedly modeled after a seed pod, the Ecopod was the most un-coffin like coffin I had ever seen. I couldn’t decide if it more resembled an escape capsule jettisoned from an alien space ship or, in the example of the Aztez Red model, like a pair of giant sanitary napkins with handles and straps. Just sandwich the body inside and cinch the thing tight.

“It looks stupid,” my wife said when I called her off the stair-stepper to come have a look. Nancy has never been one to mince words.

Another friend concurred with my alien escape-pod observation. Specifically, I was told it looked like something Mork from Ork might have used if the writers of the 80’s era sitcom didn’t have Robin Williams land on earth inside a giant egg.

I had to do some more digging to find out a price for the Ecopod (The Natural Burial Company advertises itself only as a wholesaler) and, a couple clicks later, nearly choked on my Morning Thunder.

Shazbot!

Suggested retail price (at this writing) was $3,000, more than the price of many conventional caskets.

I’m all for capitalism and making a buck, but the Ecopod seemed to run contrary to everything I’d learned so far about what was at the heart of a natural burial.

“Green burial is not about what you buy, it’s about what you don’t buy,” said Josh Slocum, executive director of the Funeral Consumers Alliance, in a March 2008 edition of NPR’s “Marketplace” profiling the Ecopod. “It’s about simplicity and economy as much as it is about being environmentally friendly.”

You go, Josh.

I found American Indian style, rough wood caskets (alder wood with Pendelton blanket lining, buckskin buttons, and plush Pendelton pillow only $1995). At Eco Coffins Ltd.—another United Kingdom company where green or “woodland” burials have gaining popular since the concept was re-discovered there in 1993—you could select a stock coffin with your choice of exterior mural or motif (e.g. ivy, poppy field, autumn leaves, or imitation wood grain) or create your own design.

It was all enough to make me seriously consider the possibility of being buried in a shroud. Still used in traditional Jewish and Muslim funerals, burial shrouds were once used in the Byzantine era by frugal Christian paupers so that a perfectly good set of clothes wouldn’t be lost to surviving family after the dead were buried in the ground. Now, one website I found offered hand-painted shrouds made of raw silk, velvet, and something called “African mud cloth” for anywhere from $300 to $500, which of course means you’re hardly impoverished if you can afford one.

Looking at all the many options in burial shrouds made me feel even grumpier. I tried to imagine the type of person who would buy one and kept picturing some aged hippie chick in silk head wrap and a caftan dress, some condescending Toyota Prius-driving weenie looking to shroud their inner Jesus in style. If your religion doesn’t call for one, a burial shrouds (even more than colorful overpriced cardboard coffins) strikes me as nothing more than an annoying burial accessory that screams, “Hey look at me. I was simple and honest and hardworking in life. What more proof than this sheet do you need?”

In the end, I decided a basic coffin was something even someone with my mediocre woodworking skills should be able to build themselves. A handmade coffin made from locally harvested wood—I’m thinking traditional pine—would not only satisfy the basic green burial requirements of simplicity and economy…it would also add a true touch character, not the sort of individuality easily purchased in a store.

With this in mind I found plans for coffins that convert into entertainment centers, coffee tables, and hope chests. I found plans for a peaked Amish style coffin and a spooky six-sided model that looked like a left over stage prop from the movie Salem’s Lot. Eventually I decided a simple rectangular box not only looked easy enough to construct, but also might work nice in my office as a book shelf. Casket Furniture had plans for such a coffin and, for around $40, promised easy step-by-step instruction.