Natural burial

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 intended as an environmentally sustainable alternative to existing funeral practices that may pose future hazards to public health and run counter to modern resource-conservation activities.

Contents 1 Natural Burial - the Body 2 Embalming 3 Coffins 4 Memorialization 5 Environmental issues with conventional burial 6 A history of natural burial 6.1 United Kingdom 6.2 United States 6.3 Canada 7 See also 8 References 9 External links 9.1 Non-Profit Public-Purpose Organizations 9.2 Private Consultants 9.3 Mutual Benefit Trade Associations 9.4 Cemeteries that offer vault-free or liner-free natural interment 9.5 Natural burial preserves

Natural Burial - the Body

The body is prepared without chemical preservatives or disinfectants such as embalming fluid; whenever these fluids contain formaldehyde they can destroy the microbial decomposers necessary to break the body down. It may be buried in a biodegradable coffin, casket, or shroud. The grave does not use a burial vault or outer burial container and 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 ( sustainable agriculture;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.

As in all cemeteries, there are records kept of the exact location of each interment, often using survey techniques such as GPS. Since most cemetery laws require permanent grave maintenance in perpetuity, GPS is not recommended unless there is a physical back-up system in place as the technology can be transient and cause the cemetery to "lose" the body over time.

Embalming

Embalming's secondary purpose is to retard decomposition and as such it is inconsistent with the objectives of natural burial. Non-toxic and naturally-derived embalming fluids without formaldehyde cure most objections to ground contamination.

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 often be 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.

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 veneers 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.

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.

Memorialization

A natural burial ground often utilizes a variety of memorialization techniques that vary from designer to designer - the prohibition of headstones, tributes, and other common markers is up to each individual cemetery and its users. Planting trees, shrubs, and flowers on or near the grave establishes a living memorial and helps create habitat.

Irrigation, pesticides and, herbicides, and synthetic fertilizers may be significantly reduced or eliminated altogether, in favor of non-toxic and less resource-dependent vegetation support and control.

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].

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.

United Kingdom

The first woodland burial ground was created at Carlisle Cemetery by retired Cemeterian Ken West, 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 administered by The Association of Natural Burial Grounds. ^[5]'

Ken West, professional cemeterian from 1961-2006, and life-long amateur naturalist, introduced woodland burial as a concept to the City of Carlisle in England in 1993, leading with a "Living Churchyard" project that returned owls, voles, and other creatures to the city cemetery by ending mowing and adding wildflowers and forage. West's achievements include: Instrumental in establishing the Association of Natural Burial Grounds; created the Charter for the Bereaved and the Charter for the Bereaved; Awarded MBE by HRH Prince Charles in 2002 for services to burial and cremation; advisor to UK's Parliament on managing pandemics and creating environmental burial services; current judge for annual UK natural burial competition; senior technical advisor for the Sustainable Cemetery Management Group and Natural End, a non-profit US organization that helps municipal and non-profit cemeteries to transition to sustainable alternatives.

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.

Ceder Brook Burial Ground is the first green cemetery in New England in Limington, Maine, about 20 miles west of Portland, Maine. Cedar Brook Burial Ground is located on a 150 acre tree farm thirty miles due west of Portland. Within its borders sits the rock wall-enclosed Joshua Small Cemetery, a tiny, historic graveyard whose dozen burials date back to the early 1800s.

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 the center of Los Angeles on the southern boundary of Hollywood 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. His cemetery is the final resting place to many of Hollywood's legends. Tyler Cassity has been involved in several films ^[6] 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 board president of the green burial land trust Trust for Natural Legacies ^[7]. As a 501(c)3 non-profit, Trust for Natural Legacies is both a traditional land trust working to establish cemetery nature preserves and also establishing itself as a "natural burial" cemetery umbrella organization where other green cemeteries can network directly with each other, share best practices and engage in continuing professional education (similar to what the Land Trust Alliance offers to nature preserves and the International Cemetery, Cremation & Funeral Association offers for cemeteries). TNL operates in the Midwestern states of Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan and Minnesota. TNL has a formal chapter in Minnesota that is run by Theresa Kay Purcell and Nicole LaBissoniere, who previously formed the Natural Burial Project.

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.

George H.Russell is an environmental activist and movie producer who participated in "green burials" in Toledo District, British Honduras (now Belize) while doing field research while working toward a Ph.D. in cultural ecology in 1968.

In the 1970's, he and his wife Sue purchased 52 acres of forest lands in Walker County, Texas hoping to establish a "green cemetery", but raising four children and making a living prevented his dream from being realized until the formal establishment of The Ethician Family Cemetery on 81 acres of a rare old-growth forest ecosystem in E. Texas in 2003. This "green cemetery" is perhaps the first where families can acquire entire quarter acre lots to serve to bury family members and their pets. This cemetery is operated by The Universal Ethician Church.

Subsequently, the Russell's have donated two additional "green cemeteries" nearby to The Universal Ethician Church, one with 58 one acre "family" lots and the other in a pelican sanctuary on 10 acres. (www.cemeterygroup.org)

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^[8]. 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. ^[9] 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.^[10]

See also

• Sky burial
• Promession
• Islamic burial

References

External links

Non-Profit Public-Purpose Organizations

• Funeral Ethics Organization Citizen/Consumer group fighting for peoples' rights for embalming free and home funerals and private property burial rights
• Funeral Consumers Alliance. Celebrating 40 years of protecting a consumer's right to choose a meaningful, dignified, affordable funeral.
• 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.
• 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.
• Natural End. Free online directory listing Natural End pledge signers to help public locate natural options; advocacy for natural burial choices in public-purpose non-profit cemeteries; creator of the Living Cemetery project in the USA

Private Consultants

• Earthartist Landscape Architecture. Specializes in the design and development of eco-cemeteries.
• 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.
• Sustainable Cemetery Management Group Experienced natural cemetery planning, operations, and management advice (Ken West, Cynthia Beal, et.al.)

Mutual Benefit Trade Associations

• International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association. USA. The ICCM, its counterpart in the UK, strongly promoted natural burial and assisted its acceptance in the mainstream; ICCFA organization members are currently looking at supporting existing cemeteries' transition to natural techniques.
• National Funeral Directors Association/ USA. Trade Association officially supporting environmentally friendly burial and funeral options and creating standards for natural funeral offerings.
• The Green Burial Council. Based in the USA, the Council is an independent, non-profit mutual benefit trade association 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.

Cemeteries that offer vault-free or liner-free natural interment

• the Natural End Map - a map built by volunteers

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
• Natural Burial Grounds in the Highlands of Scotland, Scottish Borders, Aberdeenshire, Monmouthshire and the Vale of Glamorgan managed by Native Woodland Ltd