The Centre for Natural Burial

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 […]

Victoria Times - Colonist
Victoria, the cremation capital of North America, might be the first to have a “green-burial” site.
People have been looking for environmentally friendly options when it comes to death, said Stephen Olson of Royal Oak Burial Park, which is about 18 months away from opening a half-acre site dedicated to so-called green burials.

The latest in green burial.
By Joe Sehee, Slate
Some cultures befriend death as best they can, with burial customs that embrace decay and regeneration. The American way of death has been to stave off decay with formaldehyde, bullet-proof caskets, and concrete burial vaults. But that may be changing.

Focusing on the next generation of environmental leaders;
An interview with Joe Sehee

What is green burial?
Green burial is a way of caring for our dead without the use of toxins or materials that are not biodegradable, which essentially means no formaldehyde (a major ingredient in embalming fluid), no metal caskets and no concrete vaults. It also […]

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 […]

By Kara Mayer Robinson, North Jersey Record
When Jim Robson of Rochelle Park considers what his body may have to endure when he eventually dies, he’s downright disgusted. “I do not want to be drained and filled with some goop, locked in a metal casket, then tossed into a cement tomb,” he says. “Umm, hello … […]

By Tad Friend, The New YorkerHow much rest do the dead require? Late this spring, two experts were discussing burial theory over lunch at a Japanese restaurant in Mill Valley, California. The elder man, Ron Hast, had just visited Fernwood, a new “green” cemetery on the edge of town owned by the […]

By Amy Davidson, The New Yorker Magazine
This week in the magazine, Tad Friend writes about the California cemeterian who is trying to redefine the idea of last rites. Here, with Amy Davidson, he talks about green burials, graveyard tourism, and the future of funerals.

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 […]