The Centre for Natural Burial

QUEST is a TV, radio, web, and education series by KQED
Tired of toxic embalming fluid, rain forest wood caskets and other ecologically unfriendly practices, a new generation of undertakers is attempting to green up the funeral industry with burials that go easy on the land.

Eco-friendly burials eschew headstones, embalming and pricey caskets made from exotic imported wood
By Nancy J. White, Toronto Star
Imagine a gently sloping hill covered with fallen leaves, green ferns and bright wildflowers, the branches of sturdy oaks and maples arching overhead. Birds chirp in the trees. Squirrels and chipmunks scamper on the ground.
Now imagine yourself buried […]

Green-burial movement gets more ambitious
By Gregory Dicum, Grist
“I’d prefer to be put in the ground, under a tree,” says Joe Sehee, contemplating his inevitable demise. “But I don’t want to go in the ground with anything, I just want to be buried in a simple pine box or shroud, and that’s it.”
If Sehee has given […]

In search of an earth-friendly burial
By Linda Falkenstein, The Isthmus Daily
You’d expect any place called the Gardens of Eternal Peace Mausoleum to be peaceful. Maybe too peaceful. In the central area of the Y-shaped building, rows of chairs face a large modernist mural of angular praying people. A soft symphonic version of “Bridge Over Troubled […]

Reclaiming the realities and rituals of death
By Nancy Rommelmann, LA Times Cover Story
For centuries in America, we tended to our dead. People died at home, and relatives prepared the body, laid it out in the parlor and sat by as callers paid final respects. The body was buried in the family cemetery, if there was […]