Whats So Green About Green Burial?
In simplest terms, a natural or “green” burial returns a body to the earth to decompose and recycle naturally. The body is prepared without chemical preservatives such as embalming, and is buried in a cloth shroud, or a casket made from locally harvested wood, wicker or other biodegradable materials. Natural burial grounds may also use grave markers that don’t intrude on the landscape, such as shrubs, trees, or a flat, indigenous stone, which may be engraved. It’s been receiving a lot of attention lately, but it’s hardly a new idea: this is what most of humanity did for millennia, before the rise of the new “traditional” funeral practices that are energy-, material- and chemically-intensive. The simplicity of a green burial could leave out a few things, such as the… • 30 million board feet of hardwoods • 100,000 tons of steel • 2,700 tons of copper and bronze • 1.6 million tons of reinforced concrete • 800,000 gallons of embalming fluid that are buried along with human remains in the
