13 Groundbreaking Reasons to Choose Conservation Green Burials in 2020
1. The Earth — Giving your body and a lifetime of nutrients back to the Earth helps restore the Earth’s biome, the local ecosystem, and the soil for many generations to come. Planting a tree or seeding a wildflower plot gives us a way to create new life and new hope for the world.
2. Your Wallet — On average the least cost for a conservation green burial is under $1,000. This is less than the average cost for cremation ($6,000) or conventional burial ($7,000 and up!).
3. Celebrations or Memorials in Nature — Many families find comfort and even celebrations of life in moving through their grief and taking time at the graveside or in a eco-built Memorial Hall to be with their loved ones in viewing the natural and beautiful cycles of life and death.
4. A Sense of Place — A certified Conservation green burial is preserved forever in perpetuity. So although permits may be available for burial on one’s own acreage, your land may be sold and used for other permitted purposes in the future that don’t allow access for future visitation.
5. Family History — Descendants of a loved one will be able to locate a particular gravesite through GPS and office records. Because the land with a conservation easement will always be used for the purpose of conservation burials, the site of burial will be available permanently for visitation.
Ancient Native American green burial mounds, Effigy National Monument, Iowa, Eaton Cote, Photographer
7. No Climate Change — No emissions or fossil fuel usage as with conventional burials and cremation. Cremation accounts for an estimate 16% of total carbon emissions, releasing about 1.7 billion pounds of CO2 from a million cremated bodies every year. To heat up cremation ovens to temperatures of 2000 F, about 28 million gallons of fuel are used every year in the U.S, using up our fossil fuel resources at a high rate.
8. Alkaline Hydrolysis — It claims to be “green” but does not account for mercury, plastic and other toxins that are dumped into the sewers. Mercury from dental fillings is pulverized along with bones in a Cremulator machine, causing mercury to be released as a vapor into the local air, a public health hazard and danger to technicians who then breathe in the mercury particles.
9. Saving Resources — No concrete or steel vaults are used for the sole purpose of easy lawn care maintenance in conventional cemeteries. Saving these could possibly rebuild failing bridges, roads, and other infrastructures within each state and across the U.S.
Green Burial mounds in autumn, Effigy National Monument, Iowa. Photos by National Park Service, Eaton Cote, photographer.
10. Conservation and Regeneration of Local Nature — Native ecosystems are restored and maintained, allowing for preservation of species at risk or endanger.
11. Pollinator and Specialty Gardens — Large parcels can provide pollinator native wildflower seedings for multiple-acre restoration of butterfly, bee and other wild pollinator habitat.
12. Free Burials for Children and the Homeless — Currently, the government pays for cremation of the homeless while many would choose and find comfort in a green burial with dignity.
13. Taking Time for Families to Grieve — Often a graveside ceremony, ritual or closing the earth is found to be helpful with acceptance of a death. Home funerals allow for extended time with a loved one and even creating a beautiful and loving environment in which to say goodbye, as has been the custom in Europe and in America prior to the Civil War creating the funeral industry.
Dr. Diana Cunningham has extensively researched green burials and is Director of the John Muir Memorial Green Burial Sanctuary Project, Ashland, Oregon, a groundbreaking leading-edge project with a positive environmental impact. For information on naming opportunities like the Pollinator Meadow, see https://greenburialsanctuary.com
