“Spare me the whispering, crowded room, the friends who come and gape and go, the ceremonious air of gloom — all, which makes death a hideous show.”
— Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), English poet and social critic

Let’s get this straight: there’s nothing funny about death. But I think we can all agree that’s it’s much nicer to be talking about it than actually doing it.
And it’s something most of us will have to talk about at some point, no matter how unpleasant the thought might be.
So. when my parents called the other night to say they had preplanned their funerals, while the daughter in me was saddened at the thought, my practical side could see the good sense of it all.

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IT does what it says on the can and that’s why it was chosen as one of the winners in this year’s Hampshire and Isle of Wight Sustainable Business Awards.

East Meon’s Sustainability Centre was named as Small Business of the Year, a category sponsored by Business Link, when the awards were presented by Eden Project director, Dr Tony Kendle, at the De Vere Grand Hotel, Southampton.

The centre was established in 1995 to “educate, enable and inspire” people from all walks of life to make positive changes to the way they live and work. Set in 55 acres of woodland and grassland in the South Downs National Park, it provides more than 30 courses, residential and non-residential, ranging from bush craft to renewable energy and permaculture.

The centre, which also provides a natural burial site that’s managed according to an ecologically-sound system, is also home to another of this year’s “green champions”.

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BY STEPHANIE DROSTE-PACKHAM FOR GREENING OF OIL

We are constantly thinking of ways to reduce our carbon footprint. We change our light bulbs to the more efficient squiggly ones, we use our reusable water bottles, and we recycle. But just think of the ultimate of ultimate green moves: an environmentally conscious “green” burial.

As the thought of burying resources seems to be becoming increasing absurd, we are looking for more reasonable eternal options. Mary Woodsen’s Real Money says, “Each year in U.S. cemeteries, we bury 827,060 gallons of embalming fluid, which includes formaldehyde; 180,544,000 pounds of steel; 5,400,000 pounds of copper and bronze; and 30 million board feet of hardwoods, including tropical woods.”

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Death, my Buddhist teacher likes to remind me, is a natural part of life. This is true until you get buried or cremated. At that point the multi-billion dollar funeral industry takes over, providing the deceased with satin-lined wood coffins festooned with brass accents (for the discriminating loved one), cement gravestones, cement liners and a little eau de formaldehyde and other toxins to preserve the glow of the living.

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Natural burials use a shroud or biodegradable coffin and bodies are not treated with chemicals. Funeral director Kevin Hartley says there has been plenty of interest in natural burial plots. “We’ve been conducting natural shroud burials since January last year and business has grown consistently and there’s been enormous interest in it,” he said. “The thing that is holding it back is the availability of a low-cost natural burial site.”

The Natural Earth Burial Society is still lobbying the SA Government for a site to be approved at Aldinga and has been doing its own water and soil testing.

Green Burial Council Exec, others to speak at Moles Greenacres Memorial Park in Ferndale, WA
Ferndale, WA — January 23, 2009 — Moles Family Funeral Homes and Greenacres Memorial
Park, Whatcom County’s family-owned provider of funeral services for four generations, is announcing the
inauguration of The Meadow, Western Washington’s first natural burial ground. “Green burial,” a practice
growing in popularity in recent years, is a natural process, in a natural environment, that is dedicated to
burying the deceased free of traditional chemicals and non-biodegradable materials often associated with
burial practices.

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By KRISTIN DIZON, Seatle PI

Giving added meaning to the phrase “pushing daisies,” Western Washington’s first green cemetery opens this week.

The Meadow, a natural burial ground in Ferndale, will inter unembalmed bodies in a simple, biodegradable coffin or shroud, without concrete vaults or liners. It joins White Eagle Memorial Preserve in Goldendale, which opened near the Columbia River in July 2008, giving Washington state two of the 11 certified green burial grounds in the country.

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By, The Press and Journal

THE recent funeral of former EastEnders star Wendy Richard was always going to attract attention, but it was her choice of a woven bamboo coffin that really got people talking.

Richard’s family said she wanted to be buried in an eco-friendly casket “rather than cut down another tree” – but conventional coffins do more harm to the Earth than just deplete forests.

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By Kat Kerlin

In Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman wrote, “I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love. If you want me again, look for me under your boot-soles.”

To decompose and return to the earth is natural for all living things. Yet, the modern—which is to say since the late 1860s, when formaldehyde was discovered—method of burying the dead is to embalm the bodies with toxic, preserving and disinfecting chemicals so the body can be viewed, placed in a metal coffin and lowered into a concrete vaulted cemetery plot. Add to that lavish flower displays and permanent monuments.

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