The funeral service recommended for Sally's husband would cost over $5,000. The cemetery plot and monument would incur an additional $3,000.
Money aside, there was something else that plagued the conscience of the recently widowed social worker: What was the environmental cost of burying her husband?
The Cost of Traditional Burials
Each year, traditional burials in the USA deposit 827,060 gallons of embalming fluids – formaldehyde, methanol, and ethanol – into the soil which are then washed by rainfall into the seas and lakes, endangering the ecosystem with pharmaceutical wastes.
According to John Sehee, founder of the Green Burial Council, this is enough embalming fluid to fill “eight Olympic size swimming pools.” A carcinogen, formaldehyde has been found responsible for placing anatomists and embalmers at an increased risk for leukemia and brain cancer.
Moreover, the cost of traditional burials includes unnecessary waste of natural resources – over 100,000 tons of steel, close to 3,000 tons of copper and bronze, and more than 30 million board feet for hardwoods.
The Cost of Cremations
Cremations do not provide a more feasible alternative because they release both mercury and poisonous chemicals into the environment – dioxin, hydrochloric acid, hydrofluoric acid, sulphur dioxide and carbon dioxide.
Australian scientist, Roger Short, calculates that the average Australian male produces 50 kg of carbon dioxide during the process of cremation. When the fuel used to burn the body and the carbon dioxide released from the incinerating of the coffin are added to the calculation, the environmental cost is even higher.
Promessa and Human Composting
What alternatives are available for those who care about preserving the environment even in death?
One company profiled in Mary Roach’s book, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Cadavers (New York: Norton, 2003) is Swedish company Promessa which has developed a new human composting process: freeze-drying the body in liquid nitrogen, pulverizing it with high frequency vibrations into powder that can be used as mulch for trees or shrubs planted in the cemetery or in the family’s back yard.
The economical and ecological savings of the process are tremendous. First of all, liquid nitrogen costs less than natural gas; second, there is no cost for burial plots and finally, the process poses no contamination risks to soil or water systems.
Spiritual Resonance in Green Burials
Green burial proponents are conscious of the spiritual resonance green alternatives provide. Using coffins and urns made from biodegradable materials such as newspaper, cardboard, wicker, water hyacinth or banana leaf ensures that the body becomes earth without polluting the soil.
Lining the interiors with unbleached organic cotton, flower seeds and tree seeds encourages the growth of new greenery and reinforces the resonance of transformation and passage. Already new burial trends are developing to streamline the shape of coffins in order to minimize waste and encourage spiritual solace through the metaphor of the journey.
The Ecopod, a biodegradable coffin shaped like a kayak, decomposes completely in active soil, becoming in effect mulch for new seedlings – an apt metaphor of the spiritual journey man embarks on through death. Providing for the growth of a new tree through one’s death makes a lasting gift to the world: a mature tree can process 48 lbs. of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year.
Such attempts to streamline the cost of dying while at the same time redefining man’s encounter with his own mortality can confer much consolation to the bereaved. It is no wonder that Sally found great solace in making her decision – a green burial for her husband that is ecologically, economically and spiritually sound.
Mary Desaulniers - I am a retired teacher and grandmother looking forward to the next 30 or more years with great relish and enthusiasm. My passions are ...
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