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.

(more…)

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.

(more…)

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.

(more…)

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.

(more…)

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.

(more…)

By Jennifer Burk

More than two months after the Bibb County Commission passed a cemetery ordinance restricting how and where bodies may be buried, opponents and supporters of the law still are arguing the issue. Beth Collins, CEO of Summerland Natural Cemetery, and her partner, Summerland President Jim Wood, have been to just about every commission meeting since the ordinance passed. They’ve handed out literature and implored commissioners to repeal the ordinance, which has halted their own plans for a natural cemetery in east Bibb County near the Twiggs County line.

(more…)

Hybrid vehicles, reusable grocery bags and energy-efficient light bulbs come to mind when some people think of conservation. Now, the last possible way for a person to “go green” is offered by some local funeral homes — through green burials. “It’s going back to a simpler form of burial,” said Dan Becker, chief operating officer of Becker Funeral Homes.

In the process of a green burial, an unembalmed body is wrapped or placed in biodegradable materials, laid in the ground without a vault and the gravesite is generally left unmarked.

(more…)

The “natural burial” movement is blooming in the United States, and it will get a huge boost this week when Meredith Vieira, the host of NBC Today Show, interviews Carmen Flowers. Flowers is one of the authors of a new book titled Grave Expectations - Planning the End of Life Like There is No Tomorrow.

(more…)

The Colney Wood Memorial Park, near Norwich, was opened for burials and the scattering of ashes in 2000, despite concerns from villagers over the impact on a conservation area.

(more…)