Become One With Nature Through Green Funerals

Green funerals or green burials are growing rapidly in popularity with many people wanting an eco sustainable funeral reflective of how their own values towards the environment. Green burials offer an ecologically sensitive alternative to the wasteful and expensive traditional funeral. The typical overall cost for a traditional funeral in the US is on average $6500. The green alternative is much lower in costs with the average being only $2300.

The amount of non renewable resources buried with the dead is beyond belief. Last year, 30 million feet of wood were used in caskets; another 90,272 tons of steel used for the same purpose. 14,000 additional tons of steel were used in the construction of burial vaults as well as 1.6 million tons of concrete; and 2700 tons of copper (a rapidly dwindling global supply) were also used for caskets. Finally to embalm everyone who died last year in the US, 872,060 gallons of embalming fluid were dumped into the ground.

A green funeral seeks to offer a better way of not polluting the environment while at the same time honoring the dead with a living tribute in their name. A eco friendly burial is one where the body is interred without being embalmed or being placed in a concrete vault. A plain wooden casket is used but the choice of a cardboard coffin or one made out of bamboo, wicker or bamboo is available. The coffin is buried in a shallow grave in a special location identifiable by GPS coordinates. The only marker is not a granite headstone but a tree that will be sustained by the body of the deceased.

Green funerals usually take place in conservation areas such as woodlands or forests in the process of restoration and conservation. Woodland burials are growing in popularity and green cemeteries are doubling every year to the demand from ecologically aware consumers. The Green Burial Council is an American non profit organization that is a clearinghouse of information on green funerals.

The Council aims to promotes green burials as a way of conserving natural areas in the US by informing people about the alternatives to traditional funerals. It offers a list of states that permit green burials as well as listing listing states that have green cemeteries.

Searching on the Internet for sustainable funeral services and products can turn up web sellers offering bio degradable caskets, funeral shrouds and even hollowed out gourds for cremations.

Before you plan an ecologically sound funeral, check with the laws of your state to see if they permit green burials. Remember not all states will permit these types of burials.

If your state does allow green burials, then how do you know that your final resting place will be a green one? A green cemetery should follow a number of rules and practices to ensure the viability of a woodland grave site. It should have an established conservation organization or committee to oversee and administer the area. All areas in the cemetery should have had a geological, hydrological and geographical survey done. How are the graves dug, by hand or backhoe? The accepted way is by a shallow hand dug grave. How will the graves be marked and located? These are the questions that will have to be researched further before ecologically sustainable funerals can be planned.

Eco friendly funerals, next to donating organs, are the greatest gift to the families of the deceased. It teaches that death is a part of life, nothing to be afraid of or glossed over with euphemisms, cosmetics or chemicals. The dead can continue to contribute to nature by becoming a part of the soil, the trees, the grass and the flowers.

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