The Centre for Natural Burial

Jane Wheatley, The Times
Punch the farm dog has died. It was time, really – he was staggering about, very thin and a bit bewildered in his last few days – but still it was shocking, as death always is. Ellie and I had a big cry in the kitchen afterwards. Punch had been lying out […]

By Bruce Watson, Wallet Pop
When I was in high school, I took a class titled “Death and Dying.” In addition to learning about the grieving process and reading afterlife narratives, my class studied the ins and outs of the funeral industry. We inspected coffins, read Jessica Mitford’s The American Way of Death, hung out in […]

Coffin saleswoman Cynthia Beal is bullish on the Ecopod.
By Steve Goldstein, Obit Magazine
“I’ve had the great experience of feeding people,” said Beal, who formerly owned a natural foods store. “Now I get to compost them.”

By, Are We Green Yet? (Blog)
The latest eco-friendly trend, that can be your last environmentally friendly act before leaving this world, has been labeled green burial.
This new burial process shuns the traditional burial ritual which environmentalist believe is exacting a huge toll on the environment. Embalming injects corpses with formaldehyde, a known carcinogen, that releases […]

By SARAH SKIDMORE, the Associated Press
PORTLAND, Ore. — Cynthia Beal wants to be an Oregon cherry tree after she dies. She has everything to make it happen — a body, a burial site and a biodegradable coffin.
“It is composting at its best,” said Beal, owner of The Natural Burial Company, which will sell a variety […]

By M Nassal, Stress free Productivity.blog
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust– this is a little difficult when the body is laid to rest in a hermetically sealed box. For as long as I can remember the most popular coffins have been those that will outlast the pyramids. Now a company called Natural Burial Company is […]

By APRIL DEMBOSKY, New York Times
This July, when Jorgi Wu was laid to rest in central California, she became the first American to be buried in an Ecopod — a 100 percent biodegradable coffin made of recycled paper. The seedpod-shaped coffin is designed to be planted in the ground, dissolve and replenish the earth with […]

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.

Ecological burial offers final gesture to protect the environment

By Mike Marino, Cibola County Bureau
New Mexico is one of the most environmentally friendly states in the country. A proliferation of wind farms to generate power, enough sunshine to encourage solar power utilization, and the distribution of low-watt CFL light bulbs through the schools like the program […]

Can a burial business still be eco-friendly if its new biodegradable caskets are brought in on cargo ships from China?
By LAUREN SMILEY, SF Weekly.com
People have doubted Six Feet Under consultant Tyler Cassity’s environmentalist credentials ever since he broke into the green burial business a few years ago and opened the Forever Fernwood cemetery in Mill […]