Natural burial

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The goal of a natural burial is to return the body to the earth in a manner that does not inhibit decomposition and allows the body to recycle naturally. It is an environmentally sustainable alternative to existing funeral practices.

Contents 1 Natural Burial 2 Embalming 3 Coffins 4 Environmental issues with conventional burial 5 A history of natural burial 5.1 United Kingdom 5.2 United States 5.3 Canada 6 See also 7 References 8 External links 8.1 Organizations 8.2 Natural burial preserves

[edit] Natural Burial

The body is prepared without chemical preservatives or disinfectants such as embalming fluid, whenever that fluid contains formaldehyde or another active agent that destroys the microbial decomposers necessary to break the body down.

The body may be buried in a biodegradable coffin or shroud. The grave does not use a burial vault and it should be dug to a depth shallow enough to allow the same aerobic activity found in composting.

Natural burials that permit full decomposition can take place in conventional cemeteries as well as dedicated natural burial grounds. Therefore, the act of burial should be considered distinct from landscaping and management techniques (restoration ecology; habitat conservation projects; permaculture etc.) that may vary widely from site to site and are used to maintain the burial area in perpetuity.

A natural burial ground often uses grave markers that do not intrude on the landscape. These natural markers can include shrubs and trees, or a flat indigenous stone which may be engraved. The burial ground may be designed with centralised memorial structures where visitors can sit within an emerging forest. As in all cemeteries, there are records kept of the exact location of each interment, often using survey techniques such as GIS.

Planting native trees, shrubs, and flowers on or near the grave establishes a living memorial and helps form a protected wildlife preserve. Irrigation is not used, nor are pesticides and herbicides applied.

Cemetery legislation protects natural burial preserves in perpetuity from future development while the establishment of a conservation easement prevents future owners from altering the original intent for these burial grounds. For people who are mindful of the cyclical nature of life, a natural burial is an alternative to conventional burial methods.

[edit] Embalming

Embalming's secondary purpose is to retard decomposition and as such it is inconsistent with the objectives of natural burial. Many US sites will not permit the interment of embalmed bodies, but refusal to inter the embalmed body of a client may pose problems for some cemeteries, especially if the fluid is non-toxic. In many of the UK's woodland burial sites, the practice is discouraged but not completely disallowed.

No state or province in North America requires routine embalming of bodies. When specified by state ordinance (usually within 24 hours of death), refrigeration, chilling or dry ice can usually be legally substituted for embalming. Special circumstances such as an extended time between death and burial and transportation of remains on commercial flights that do not currently permit unembalmed bodies to travel may necessitate embalming.

The most common embalming fluid contains Formalin, a 10% formaldehyde solution that oxidizes to formic acid, the toxin in bee stings and fire ants. This solution is technically biodegradable over time, but it cross-links proteins found in tissue cell membranes; preventing bacterial decomposition and inhibits the body's breakdown in the earth.

The potential for embalming fluid to contaminate soil or water tables has not been studied thoroughly.

Formaldehyde-based embalming fluid is a volatile compound. Formaldehyde is a known carcinogen and has deleterious health effects for mortuary workers (citation needed). It is implicated in cancer, ALS, nervous system disorders, and other ailments. Its volatility requires workers to wear respirators, and the substance may put funeral home workers at risk.

[edit] Coffins

Natural coffins are made from materials that readily biodegrade. Ideally, the materials are readily renewable or recycled, with less embodied energy in the production equation.

Coffins (tapered shoulder shape) and Caskets (rectangular shape) are made from a variety of materials. Most of them are not biodegradable. 80-85% of the caskets sold for burial in North America ^[1] in 2006 were stamped steel. Solid wood and particle board (chipboard) coffins with hardwood veneeers comprise 10-15% of the sales, with fiberglass and alternative materials (such as woven fiber) making up the rest.

Most traditional caskets in the UK are made from chipboard covered in a thin veneer. Handles are usually plastic designed to look like brass. The chipboard requires glue to stick the wood particles together. Some glues that are used, such as those that contain formaldehyde, are seen as environmentally unfriendly. There is concern that such glues will cause pollution when they are burned during cremation or degrading in the ground. However, not all engineered wood products are produced using formaldehyde glues.

More expensive caskets and coffins are often manufactured using exotic and in some cases endangered species of wood and designed to prevent decomposition. While there are generally no restrictions on the type of coffin used, most sites encourage the use of environmentally friendly coffins made from cardboard or wicker. A simple cotton shroud is another option.

[edit] Environmental issues with conventional burial

Each year, 22,500 cemeteries across the United States bury approximately:

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. ^[2]

(Compiled from statistics by Casket and Funeral Association of America, Cremation Association of North America, Doric Inc., The Rainforest Action Network, and Mary Woodsen, Pre-Posthumous Society)

• The chemical properties of formaldehyde should be noted - once formaldehyde has been used for embalming purposes, it is no longer (technically and chemically) formaldehyde. The formaldehyde has broken down and the chemicals released into the ground after burial and ensuing decomposition are inert.
• The problems associated with formaldehyde and its constituent components when used in a natural burial setting are the unnecessary chemical exposure to mortuary workers ^[3] and the destruction of the decomposer microbes necessary for breakdown of the body in the soil ^[4].

[edit] A history of natural burial

The practice of natural burial dates back thousands of years but has been interrupted in modern times by "technological advances" (vaults, liners, embalming, mausoleums, etc.) that mitigate the decomposition process. In the late nineteenth century Sir Francis Seymour Hayden proposed "earth to earth burial," in a pamphlet of the same name, as an alternative to either cremation or the slow putrefaction of encased corpses.

[edit] United Kingdom

The first woodland burial ground was created at Carlisle Cemetery in the United Kingdom in 1993 and was called woodland burial. Greenhaven Woodland Burial Ground in the village of Lilbourne, Rugby, was the first privately owned natural burial ground when it opened a year later. Over 200 dedicated natural burial sites have been created in the UK, and the industry in the UK has a code of practice admistered by The Association of Natural Burial Grounds. ^[5]

[edit] United States

Billy Campbell, a rural doctor, an environmentalist, and a pioneer in the Green Burial Movement in the USA, opened the first modern "green cemetery" in North America.

In 1998, he and his wife, Kimberley, opened the Ramsey Creek Preserve in upstate South Carolina. It specializes in burials that eschew embalming, traditional coffins, and headstones in favor of a simpler, less costly, more natural approach. Graves are hand-dug, and instead of using expensive, finished coffins, the dead are buried in shrouds or a plain wooden box without a vault or grave liner.

[edit] Canada

Mike Salisbury is a leading advocate of the natural burial movement in Canada and the current president of the Natural Burial Co-operative in Toronto^[6]. A full member of the Ontario Association of Landscape Architects and the principal of Earthartist Landscape Architecture, Salisbury provides planning design and consultation to groups throughout North America involved in establishing new natural burial grounds. ^[7] Featured in the 2005 CBC expose on the Canadian funeral industry "Outside the Box", Salisbury has helped develop natural burial standards that encourage sustainability in the death care industry and facilitate ecological restoration and landscape level conservation.^[8]

Joe Sehee is a leading advocate of the Green Burial Movement in the United States. Joe is the executive director of the Green Burial Council, an organization he founded to encourage sustainability in the death care industry and to use the burial process as a means of facilitating ecological restoration and landscape level conservation.

The organization recently established the nation's first certifiable standards for cemeteries, funeral providers, and cremations facilities. Conventional funeral providers in eight states will now be offering the Green Burial Council approved burial package, providing a way for consumer to identify death care professionals willing to assist them with environmentally conscious end-of-life rituals.

Tyler Cassity rose to prominence in the death care industry by taking a bankrupt cemetery in a borderline part of Los Angeles and turning it into Hollywood Forever, where he had movies projected on the side of Rudolph Valentino’s mausoleum, and displayed his “LifeStories,” which are A&E-style video biographies of the dead. Tyler Cassity has been involved in several films ^[9] and has worked as a consultant on HBO's Six Feet Under.

The Fernwood Burial Ground in Marin County's Mill Valley dates from the 19th century and is adjacent to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Tyler Cassity's Forever Enterprises purchased it in 2004. The Fernwood property is 32 acres (130,000 m²) with most of it set aside for natural burial with no tombstones or caskets. Instead, bodies are buried there in ways that aid natural decomposition, and survivors can locate their loved-ones’ burial site with a handheld device that contains a GPS location finder.

Mary Woodsen is a trustee and officer (president) of Greensprings Natural Cemetery Preserve in Newfield, New York.

Mary also a long-time member of the Finger Lakes Land Trust, which protects 8,000 acres (32 km²) in the Finger Lakes and Southern Rivers regions, the Cayuga chapter of Keeping Track (a national organization working with local groups around the country that document the presence of keystone wildlife species in their areas, the better to inform decisions about local and regional land use), a task force looking at conservation zoning in her township of Danby, the Society of Environmental Journalists, the Society of Conservation Biology, and the National Association of Science Writers.

Greensprings Natural Cemetery was the third natural burial ground to be established in North America.[1] An area of 100 acres (0.40 km²) of rolling hilltop meadows south of Cayuga Lake in New York's Finger Lakes region. Greensprings on Irish Hill is bounded by 4,000 acre (16 km²) Arnot Forest and 4,000 acre (16 km²) Newfield State Forest.

Mark Dahlby currently serves as executive director of the green burial land trust Trust for Natural Legacies ^[10]. Trust for Natural Legacies is the first green cemetery organization to utilize eco-cemeteries as a conservation tool for traditional non-profit land trusts. In 2008, Theresa Kay Purcell and Nicole LaBissoniere formed the Natural Burial Project in Minneapolis, Minnesota. They are currently heading the Minnesota Chapter of Trust for Natural Legacies and are working to establish the first conservation cemetery in Minnesota.

Gordon Maupin, Executive Director of The Wilderness Center, Inc. a nonprofit nature center and land trust in Ohio started Foxfield Preserve. Foxfield Preserve is the first nature preserve cemetery to be operated by a nonprofit conservation organization. Foxfield Preserve is formerly agricultural land. The Wilderness Center is restoring part of the site to native prairie grasses and wildflowers and reforesting part of the preserve. Foxfield Preserve is adjacent to The Wilderness Center's 600-acre (2.4 km²) headquarters tract near Wilmot, Ohio.

[edit] See also

• Sky burial
• Promession
• Islamic burial

[edit] References

[edit] External links

[edit] Organizations

• Centre for Natural Burial. Information and resources supporting the global natural burial movement: a complete listing and description of natural burial cemeteries in North America Europe and the UK and a comprehensive archive of natural burial magazine and newspaper articles dating back to the mid 1990's.
• The Green Burial Council. Based in the USA, the Council is an independent, non-profit organization founded to encourage ethical and sustainable practices in the death care industry and has established "Green Certified" protocols for cemetery site selection, memorial nature preserve operators, funeral providers and cremation facilities. The Center offers memberships for organizations meeting their stringent environmental standards.
• Memorial Ecosystems. Formed in 1996 by Dr. Billy Campbell, Memorial Ecosystems offers consulting services in conservation Burial Set up and Start up, creating partnerships and joint ventures.
• Funeral Help. Consumers and industry experts providing information on the funeral process.
• Funeral Consumers Alliance. Celebrating 40 years of protecting a consumer's right to choose a meaningful, dignified, affordable funeral.
• Association of Natural Burial Grounds. Based in the United Kingdom, this organization offers advice on "How To Set Up a Natural Burial Grounds" publishes a "Code of Practice" and offers a newsletter for members and several publications for the general public.
• Earthartist Landscape Architecture. Specializes in the design and development of eco-cemeteries.

[edit] Natural burial preserves

• Clayton Wood Natural Burial Ground, Sussex, UK
• Cedar Brook Burial Ground, US
• Ramsey Creek Nature Preserve
• Honey Creek Woodlands
• Trust For Natural Legacies
• Prairie Wilderness Cemetery
• Greensprings Natural Cemetery
• Glendale Nature Preserve
• Natural Burial Co-operative
• Foxfield Preserve
• Olney Green Burial Ground, UK
• Green Lane Burial Field Powys Wales
• Milton Fields Natural Burial Grounds