Green Options

You can now go green to the grave in Utah. The burial site, Lakeview, has been approved by the Green Burial Council, which sets green standards for cemeteries, funeral providers and burial products. Utah is the ninth state to establish a green burial option since 1998.

Sustainability, it seems, can be practiced in all aspects of one’s life–including DEATH!

As I discovered recently, traditional methods of handling dead humans are surprisingly serious sources of pollution and resource consumption. For example, burials require a dangerous toxin, formaldehyde, to embalm the body, and those pollutants remain in the corpse as it decays and then goes back into the Earth. Caskets, too, can be problematic in terms of using wood (usually not sustainably harvested), and then the graveyards where they all end up take up lots of land. What about cremation? Well, stoking those fires requires tremendous amounts of power–i.e., electricity, which of course usually comes from coal-fired power plants.

According to the statistics from Wikipedia, each year in America the following environmental nasties get sent below ground with our dearly departed:

• 30 million board feet (70,000 m³) of hardwoods (caskets);
• 90,272 tons of steel (caskets);
• 14,000 tons of steel (vaults);
• 2,700 tons of copper and bronze (caskets);
• 1,636,000 tons of reinforced concrete (vaults);
• 827,060 US gallons (3,130 m³) of embalming fluid, which most commonly includes formaldehyde.1

Knowing all this, Death becomes even scarier than usual for any eco-conscious person. But rather than face the great unknown with a heavy heart, rather than lie in the Earth without the ability to rest in peace, you can help preserve the planet even after you are gone. Yes, you can get a green burial.

Photo Credit: GreenspringsThe move towards a greener lifestyle extends even to the end of life. Choices for the final resting place include some relatively new approaches. Many of these developments seem to be coming out of the United Kingdom and from Europe, though they are being adopted in other countries, as well.

Green burials are now being performed in park- or forest-like settings. The more familiar green lawn

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