The Centre for Natural Burial

By Associated Press
A growing number of environmentalists are trying to go “green” even when it comes to death, planning for home funerals with handmade, biodegradable caskets.
Penny Rhodes, 64, of Albany Township, and her family washed and dressed her father’s body after he died and then wrapped him in a family quilt in his bed.
Her brother […]

More are choosing to be buried simply — without elaborate caskets or preparations — to lessen their final impact on the environment
By Cynthia Hubert - Bee Staff Writer
Hannah Wit once told her longtime boyfriend what should happen to her body after her death.No toxic embalming fluid for preservation, she insisted. No fancy metal casket lined […]

The Greening of American Cemeteries
by Kathleen Everett
It was raining when we got there. Correction: teeming. This was not the gentle day we awakened to, my intrepid companion and I, but we’d driven up from the Hudson Valley to visit Greensprings Natural Cemetery Preserve in Newfield, N.Y. and we were undeterred. As the hydro-apocalypse moved in, […]

Parmalee Thomas A.. American Funeral Director. 130(3)pp20
It’s a substance most embalmers work with just about every day. But it has managed to cause a storm of controversy in the European Union that has gone largely unnoticed in the United States.

Plan cemetery to buy, protect N.H. ranchland
By Deborah Baker, Associated Press
GALISTEO BASIN PRESERVE, N.M. — Tromping across a small, grassy meadow ringed by piñon and juniper trees and dotted with cactuses and clumps of bright-yellow flowers, Joe Sehee suddenly came to a stop. “That’s definitely a burial area,” he said, peering at the gently sloped, […]

Burials returning to the practice of days past
Frank Fisher, Park Record
Green burials at green-burial sites have become almost as common in English communities as the corner pub and are now drawing interest in the United States.
This futuristic trend is a practice from the past. Picture a funeral where a loved one is laid to rest […]

By Robbie Byrd, THE HUNTSVILLE ITEM
OAKHURST, TEXAS— She had been battling cancer for nearly two years now, and finally she drew her last breath surrounded by friends and family. They took her frail body — wrapped in a warm down comforter — and lined her grave with Spanish moss, just as she had asked them […]

Shannon Beahen, Ottawa Xpress
How we die says a lot about how we live
This issue is our first Art of Living special and for it we’ve chosen stories that look at some unique or artful ways some of us choose to live: It may be where we skateboard, where we meet others of the same ideology, […]

It’s time for land trusts to enter the land of the dead.
by Stephen F. Christy, Jr.
Land Trust Alliance Exchange
It’s time for land trusts to enter the land of the dead. We’re already doing it. Think about our daily work.  Our newsletters overflow with successful land preservations, the enjoyment so many folks are having on these […]

Green Cemeteries Fund Conservation
By Nancy Bazilchuk, Conservation In Practice Vol. 8 No. 1
The Galisteo Basin Preserve in New Mexico is a conservationist’s dream. The 5,260-hectare parcel is blanketed by a patchwork of pinon and juniper forests and blue grama grasslands, with raptors wheeling overhead while jackrabbits and coyotes lope down dry arroyos. And if Joe […]