Pagan Dying and Death Options

News Stories and Articles

On this page:

Eco-burial news
Death Be Not Manicured (slide show)- Slate news
From corpse to compost - from Toronto Star
Eco-burial turns corpse to compost
Seeking Harmony in a Final Return to the Land
Alternative Funerals (done by family)

Issues re the pollution via fire cremation
Across U.S., neighbours protest crematoriums Critics worry about odors, mercury, smokestack ash
Reduce, reuse and recycle yourself
Some unorthodox but environmentally friendly ways to dispose of the dead

New 'Freeze-dried" ecological cremation option
Body and Soil - Traditional funeral practices harm the environment; green burials let the earth rest in peace
Swedes offer freeze-dry burials

Right to Die articles
Swiss euthanasia charity helps 22 Britons to die

(for more info on the organizations noted in these articles, see Natural and Green Burial Options)

Note: The Natural Burial Association, Dying with Dignity of Canada and The World Federation of Right to Die Societies also track current articles in the Canadian news and major changes in legalities around the issues of 'right to die' and 'dying with dignity' in Canada

Eco-burial news

Slate news article - Death Be Not Manicured (the latest in green burial) by JOE SEHEE - excellent informational slide show on the internet (short but very cohesive) - December 27, 2006

Toronto Star article - From corpse to compost Jun. 10, 2006. 01:00 AM by STEPHEN SCHARPER

So, you have spent your whole life trying to decrease your ecological footprint, recycling cans and bottles, avoiding pesticides in your garden, biking and using pubic transit as much as possible, and helping others value nature.

Now, as you reach the sunset of life, the thought of filling yourself with toxic embalming fluid before going into an expensive, hardwood casket, or contributing to greenhouse gases through cremation, doesn't quite sit right. Is there a "green" burial alternative, you wonder?

If Janet McCausland has her way, the answer here in Canada will soon be, "You bet!"

McCausland is the executive director of the Toronto-based Natural Burial Association, and her mission is to provide an environmentally-friendly alternative to conventional burials in Canada. She espouses "low-impact burials," those that, according to the association brochure, "reduce energy and resource consumption, are less toxic, conserve water, and included materials which are locally produced in a sustainable manner."

While not yet available in Canada, McCausland says green burials are increasingly popular in the United Kingdom, which has more than 200 natural burial grounds, as well as New Zealand and the U.S., which has seen natural burial sites sprout up in California, New York, Florida and South Carolina. She is working to ensure that such burials will be available here in Canada in the near future.

For Mary Woodsen, president of Green Springs Natural Cemetery Association ("Save a forest. Plant yourself.") in upstate New York, the ecological cost of contemporary, conventional burials is steep, forming a part of the ecological crisis few ever consider.

"On average," she says, "a U.S. cemetery buries 1,000 gallons of embalming fluid, 97.5 tons of steel, 2,028 tons of concrete, and 56,250 board feet of high quality tropical hardwood in just one acre of green. And then there's the tons of fertilizers, pesticides, and water not to mention emissions like CO{-2}, nitrates, ozone, soot, and more that it takes to keep cemeteries looking well manicured."

And if you think cremation is more environmentally benign, Woodsen says, think again.
"Each cremation," Woodsen claims, "releases between .8 and 5.9 grams of mercury as bodies are burned. This amounts to between 1,000 and 7,800 pounds of mercury released each year in the US."

The alternative, "natural burial," Woodsen describes as "letting nature take its course: no embalming fluid, simple biodegradable caskets, environmentally responsible care of the land, low-density burials, a natural return to the earth, natural stone markers, flush with the earth, or commemorative plantings of native trees and shrubs."

According to the Natural Burial Association, which works co-operatively with the Green Burial Council in the U.S. and the Natural Death Centre in the U.K., natural burial grounds are "green spaces of beauty and ecological renewal." They utilize native species to provide refuge to birds and butterflies, "and groves and wild meadows" to provide solace for the bereaved.
For McCausland, natural burial grounds are also an original way of creating and preserving green spaces, often near urban cores. "One of our dreams," she says, "is to develop brownfields (abandoned industrial and commercial sites) into natural burial grounds."

Natural interment may indeed be an increasingly preferred spiritual alternative as more religious groups engage in ecological reflection and renewal. The Canadian Forum on Religion and Ecology and the Faith and the Common Good Project in Canada are but two examples of hundreds of religious environmental initiatives worldwide, and as their members are involved in the religious rituals surrounding burials, the green alternative may increase along with their ecological awareness. For McCausland, a Unitarian, the environment has long been a part of her spirituality.

A vegetarian, McCausland sees a direct connection between her advocacy for natural burials and the Seventh Principle of the Unitarian Universalists, which posits "respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part."

The natural death movement also invokes the spiritual qualities of humility and charity. Millions of Christians have heard the humbling reminder on Ash Wednesday that they are "dust" and "unto dust" they shall return, and the idea of a simple, non-polluting, non-ostentatious burial invokes the notion that we, as humans, are "just plain citizens" of the land, rather than its reigning lords and masters.

Such a burial also suggests that in dying we also have a last chance at giving, not only through organ donation, but also through the return to the soil of our very bodies, which in death, through non-toxic decomposition, can help engender new life.

A redemptive thought to carry to the grave.

Stephen Scharper teaches religion and environmental studies at the University of Toronto. Email stephen.scharper@utoronto.ca

Washington Times - date not noted
Eco-burial turns corpse to compost By Jurgen Hecker AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
or
Water Conserve Site - posted May 20, 2004
Old-style funerals face stiff competition from ecological freeze-dry method

LYR, Sweden - An environmentally friendly method of burying the dead is offering tough competition to traditional funerals - transforming corpses into organic compost and giving people the chance to come back as flowers.

Traditional burials and cremations hurt the environment by polluting air and water and upsetting the ecology of the sea. This led Swedish biologist Susanne Wiigh to come up with an alternative.

"Nature's original plan was for dead bodies to fall on the earth, be torn apart by animals and become soil," Mrs. Wiigh said in Lyr, a small, romantic island off Sweden's southwestern coast, where she lives with her family and runsher company, Promessa AB.

Mrs. Wiigh, who also manages the island's only shop well-stocked with organic food next to an impressive greenhouse, concedes that "we clearly can't go back to that," but said her method is as close to nature as modern ethics allow.

The method consists of taking the corpse's temperature to minus 321 Fahrenheit in a liquid-nitrogen bath and breaking the brittle body down into a rough powder through mechanical vibration.

The remains are then dehydrated and cleared of any metal, reducing a body weighing 165 pounds in life to 55 pounds of pink-beige powder, plus the remains of the coffin.

The whole process occurs in a facility resembling a crematorium and takes about two hours. A corpse buried in a coffin takes several years to decompose completely.

Mrs. Wiigh says compost always has been her passion.

"For me, it's really romantic. It smells good. It feels like gold," she said.

And like all compost, human remains should be used to feed plants and shrubs, planted by a dead person's family. She thinks the powder would be incorporated completely into the plant within a few years.

"The plant becomes the perfect way to remember the person. When a father dies, we can say, 'The same molecules that made up Daddy also built this plant,' " said Mrs. Wiigh, whose late cat Tussan currently nourishes a rhododendron bush in her front garden.

Mrs. Wiigh, a soft-spoken woman with an easy smile who dedicates 60 hours a week to Promessa, also would like to turn into a rhododendron - of the white variety.

What might look like no more than an ecologist's dream vision might have serious business potential, breathing new life into an innovation-shy industry.

Industrial-gas company AGA Gas, part of Germany's Linde group, has invested in the idea, taking a controlling stake of 53 percent in Promessa, alongside Mrs. Wiigh's 42 percent and 5 percent held by the Church of Sweden.

"The commercial potential could be quite large," said AGA spokesman Olof Kaellgren, whose company contributes expertise of the nitrogen-cooling process.

But he stressed that AGA considers the new method to be "a complement to already existing methods and, therefore, giving a new opportunity to make a choice that many people may feel is better than today's alternative."

The city of Joenkoeping, in southwestern Sweden, already has decided it will not replace its outdated crematorium and will become the first customer of Promessa. The freeze-drying installation, which will be cheaper than the 2 million euro price of a new crematorium, will be ready next year.

Promessa has applied for patents in 35 countries. Its immediate foreign markets are in ecology-conscious Northern Europe and include Scandinavia, Britain, Germany and the Netherlands, where the next installation is likely to be built.

But queries have come from as far away as South Africa, where the soil often lacks the depth needed for ordinary burials.

There also might be sales potential in countries where religion makes cremation difficult or impossible, such as Muslim countries.

And Swedish designers have been stirred into action by the new method, focusing their attention on making containers that are smaller than traditional coffins and biodegradable.

Stockholm design graduate Linda Jaerned has made two prototypes, for those who would like their freeze-dried remains to be buried in a container, rather than just mixed with soil.

One is a soft tube made of felt, resembling a paper dragon in a Chinese New Year parade, and the other is a more traditional-looking box made of plywood and linen.

"The first one will disintegrate completely in about a year, and the second one will last longer, maybe up to five years," she said at the Stockholm design school.

"I think this is the future. We don't have so much space for the dead. The living will take more and more space," Miss Jaerned said.

New York Times - posted January 11, 2004
Seeking Harmony in a Final Return to the Land By JULIE DUNN

BABS McDONALD of Athens, Ga., says that when death takes her, there will be no reason for her family to spring for an expensive coffin and elaborate headstone.

"What do I need it for at that point?" said Ms. McDonald, 50, an environmental educator for the Forest Service. "I don't even want a cardboard box. I want my body to give back to the earth. It is supposed to decompose and nourish the earth, become food for all the microorganisms."

Ms. McDonald is among a small but growing number of people who want environmentally friendly or "green" burials. The goals, they say, are to conserve land and to cut down on what they see as unnecessary pollution from the hundreds of thousands of gallons of embalming fluid and thousands of tons of metal that are deposited into the ground each year.

While the Environmental Protection Agency says that the formaldehyde and human wastes from a buried, embalmed body can potentially cause disease in humans or harm aquatic life, no studies have found conclusively that embalmed bodies are a risk to water supplies and soil. Still, some advocates of green burials say there is cause for concern.

"From a common sense standpoint, putting a chemical that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration deems toxic into the ground certainly can't be beneficial to the environment," said Joshua Slocum, executive director of the Funeral Consumers Alliance, a nonprofit group.

Looking ahead to her own green burial, Ms. McDonald last year bought two plots - one for herself and one for her husband - at Ramsey Creek Preserve, which opened six years ago in Westminster, S.C. "I see it as a win-win situation," she said. "Death is really just a part of life, and this is a great way to preserve a piece of land."

The rules for green burials are simple: coffins must be nontoxic and biodegradable, no vaults are allowed and embalming fluids are not used. Headstones are not permitted; flat rocks, plants and trees are used as grave markers.

"Cemeteries need to become more than cemeteries," said Dr. Billy Campbell, a physician in Westminster and a longtime environmentalist who opened Ramsey Creek, a private, for-profit company. "We want to redefine how we use this space. We're trying to create something that people don't think of as 'The Blair Witch Project' creepy. Ramsey Creek is a great place to go for a hike, do some bird watching, even hold a wedding."

More than 30 people have paid $1,950 each to be interred at the 35-acre Ramsey Creek preserve, and an additional 75 have bought plots, he said.

"Our goal is to have only a 3 to 5 percent interment density, which would be about 1,000 people on all 35-acres, as compared to 1,000 people per acre at most traditional cemeteries," he said.

Such burials have been gaining popularity in Britain. More than 180 green-burial cemeteries have been established there in the last decade, according to the Natural Death Center, based in London.

The idea is not yet as popular in the United States; besides Ramsey Creek, two other green cemeteries are the 350-acre Glendale preserve near DeFuniak Springs, Fla., and the 81-acre Ethician Family Cemetery near Lake Livingston in San Jacinto County in East Texas. Both have opened in the last year and have not yet conducted any burials.

More are on the way. Dr. Campbell recently went into a partnership with Forever Enterprises, owner of 10 cemeteries nationwide, including the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, to buy and convert 17 acres in Marin County, Calif., into a green cemetery and nature preserve.

"Even though it's not that large of a space, it gives us an opportunity to show off what we can do," Dr. Campbell said, adding that burials were expected to start in the spring and to start at other California sites by year-end.

Tyler Cassity, president of Forever Enterprises, said: "I feel optimistic about this, looking at what's happened in Great Britain and just on demographics alone. The big question is: Will a large enough percentage of environmentally minded people be willing to do this to save the land?"

Burials are not the only way to go green. According to the Cremation Association of North America, 17 percent of those who choose cremation do so for environmental reasons, though it found that the main reason is cost.

Cremations were done for more than 27 percent of all deaths in 2002, at an average cost of $1,000 to $1,200, and the association estimates that the share will climb to 39 percent by 2010. According to the National Funeral Directors Association, the average cost for a burial with a coffin in September 2003 was $5,394.24.

The shift toward cremation has been accompanied by more environmentally friendly memorial sites for cremated remains.

Horan & McConaty, a funeral home in Aurora, Colo., a suburb of Denver, recently opened such a site, the one-acre Rocky Mountain Memorial Park. It includes a waterfall and pond. "I was very passionate that this have an organic feel to it," said John Horan, the president of Horan & McConaty. "I wanted people to feel like they're in a high mountain meadow."

Prices at the park range from $125 to scatter ashes to $2,000 for a niche in a columbarium wall, where remains can be sealed.

"The baby boomers are largely redefining what we're doing because they are much more sensitive about the environment and find greater value in ecologically friendly burials," Mr. Horan said. "The previous generation had a real sense of duty about burials and funerals, but my feeling is that the baby boomers don't feel inclined to do the same thing. They're largely choosing memorialization options that reflect the life of that person and the way that they lived."

FOR the last 16 years, Barbara and Don Blehm have been running the Mountain Wilderness Memorial Park, a two-acre site in rural Woodland Park, Colo., at the base of Pikes Peak. Cremated remains of more than 150 people have been scattered or buried there.

"We saw that some families really need a place that they can identify with to scatter their loved ones' ashes," Mrs. Blehm said. "I think that interest in this has grown greatly."

Those who prefer the water to dry land can turn to Eternal Reefs, a company based in Atlanta that mixes cremated remains into cast concrete to create artificial coral reefs. Since 1998, the remains of about 300 people and one dog have been submerged at one of 11 sites.

"They actually become part of the reef," said Don Brawley, Eternal Reefs' founder and president, who also was co-founder of the Reef Ball Development Group, which makes synthetic marine habitats.

Mr. Brawley came up with the idea for Eternal Reefs after his father-in-law asked that his remains be mixed into one of Reef Ball's modules. "He said, 'I would rather spend eternity with all that life down there than in a field with a bunch of dead people,' " Mr. Brawley recalled. "The next thing you know, everybody was asking us to do it. And it has blossomed from there."

Loved ones of the deceased can participate in every step of the process, from choosing the location of the reef to accompanying it on a chartered boat to its final resting place. Prices range from $995, to become part of a community reef with several commingled remains, to $4,995 for an individual reef.

"This is good for the environment, good for the families and good for the soul," Mr. Brawley said. "The baby-boomer generation wants to give something back. Things are changing; this is going to be the next big thing."

BBC - Inside Out - posted February 9, 2004

Alternative Funerals (done by family)

It is an absolute certainly that we will all have a funeral one day. Less of a certainty is how our lives will be commemorated.

Inside Out investigates how funerals are changing…

The traditional way of conducting a funeral - dark clothes, black hearse, wooden coffin - is not what all bereaved families want.

Simon Jefferies from Co-op Funerals says, "Funerals are changing. People are becoming more aware of the alternatives available to them."

Choices

Alternatives to typical funeral arrangements are vast; "Eco-pods" are replacing coffins, secluded woodlands are substituting cemeteries and trees supplanting headstones.
"We loaded the coffin into the back of my hatchback. It fitted beautifully." Jane Salvage

Some people seem to be under the impression that to deviate from the standard funeral procedure is actually illegal. This is not true.

Stephanie Wienrich from the Natural Death Centre says, "People just didn't realise. They thought, you have to use a funeral director, you have to use a hearse, you have to use a coffin. Actually, none of these are correct. A family can do everything themselves."

Personalised funeral

Jane Salvage's mother, the late Pattie Grutchfield, died almost 18 months ago. Her funeral differed from the norm in almost every aspect. Pattie died at home in bed at the age of 68-years-old.

Jane says, "The last thing we wanted was a normal, conveyor belt funeral with a chipboard coffin and an undertaker we'd never met."
Jane knew a typical funeral was not her mother's wish. Jane Salvage

"I washed her and dressed her in white. I'm a nurse by background... so it wasn't a new experience for me.

"We carried her into the sitting room where we had an eco-pod waiting. We put scented candles around and tried to make it beautiful for her last rest at home."

The family then took Pattie's body to a woodland burial ground.

"We loaded the coffin into the back of my hatchback. It fitted beautifully... As I drove down a very steep slope, I had visions that she was going to come shooting through the front windscreen and go whizzing off on her own trajectory to the burial ground.

"Luckily that didn't happen. That was a hairy moment, really.

"We devised a ceremony ourselves and kept it simple. Looking back on it, I have a sense of satisfaction. She would have liked it."
Environmental damage Woodland burial reconstruction

Woodland burials are increasingly popular

Jane says a desire to protect the environment is one reason her family planned her mother's burial as they did.

Hazel Selina makes eco-pods from recycled material for her company called Arka. She says, "The shape itself of the traditional coffin has become an archetypal symbol of the hammer horror movies and vampires so I thought I would like to create something more beautiful."
Woodland burial grounds

At woodland burial sites, each grave is marked only by a tree and a number, rather than a headstone. There are eight woodland burial sites in the South East.

The Natural Death Centre recommends the following questions should be asked of any woodland burial site, when organising a funeral:

* What long-term guarantees can you give of the security of the grave we purchase?
* What security is there that the site will be maintained even when there is no more room for graves or if the site goes bankrupt?
* On what ecological principles is the site managed?
* If I pay in advance (which the centre does not recommend), what security is there for my money?

Sea burial

Sea burials are an alternative method to burial on land or cremation, which allows a person to return their body to nature and continue the circle of life.

There are several essential steps prior to a sea burial:

* Register the death with the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages.
* Obtain a license from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA).
* Preparation of the body to standards required by the DEFRA.
* Purchase an appropriate coffin according to the DEFRA standards.
* Organise a ceremony.

These can be arranged through a Funeral Director.

Issues re the pollution via fire cremation

Redding News - posted November 21, 2003
Across U.S., neighbors protest crematoriums
Critics worry about odors, mercury, smokestack ash
Los Angeles TimesSAN RAFAEL - After officials in this upscale Marin County town north of San Francisco approved a downtown mortuary's request to add an on-site crematory, denizens of a popular bakery next door weren't exactly pleased.

"Bake Bread, Not Bodies!" fumed one sign at a raucous City Council meeting in May. Another read: "Over My Dead Body."

Neighbors winced at the image of a "cadaver incinerator" that would run year-round, 16 hours a day. A Web site created by critics warned of large bodies known as "stinkers" that could take eight hours to burn, rather than the average 90 minutes. Area fliers showed a flaming skull and crossbones, asking: "Citizens' last rites?"

As offbeat as this crematory showdown appears, such public theatrics are playing out nationwide.

By 2025, funeral industry studies suggest, nearly half of Americans will be cremated. Since 1999, the number of crematories has risen 20 percent - from 1,468 to 1,825 last year. But in communities from Connecticut to California, residents say they don't want them near their homes, right beneath their noses.

Residents of Aiken, S.C., bought full-page newspaper ads to fight a crematory. In Seaside, near San Francisco, neighbors formed a group called A.S.H., for Allied Seaside Homeowners. Officials in Goodyear, Ariz., voted down a crematory after neighbors took to the streets.

Most critics worry about mercury from dental fillings, creepy odors and ash escaping from crematory smokestacks. They worry about a largely unregulated industry scandalized by incidents such as the Georgia facility that stockpiled 334 bodies rather than incinerate them. And in October, a Southern California crematory operator pleaded guilty to 66 counts of mutilating corpses - selling the body parts for research.

One complaint, related neither to health nor environment, tops them all. Call it the heebie-jeebie factor.

"The outrage illustrates how people feel about their proximity to dead bodies," said San Rafael Planning Commissioner John Alden. "Most don't like the idea that a corpse could leave a funeral home not inside a casket but through a smokestack."

Residents monitor some crematories with video surveillance cameras and conduct regular, albeit unscientific, "sniff tests" to gauge emissions.

Funeral directors say concerns about emissions and smells are vastly overstated. "When it comes to crematory fights, the respect for the dead goes right out the window," said Jack Springer, executive director of the Cremation Association of North America. He has some advice for funeral directors planning to add an on-site crematory: Get ready for World War III.
"Crematories always lose the battle of public perception," he says. "Even if a project wins, the sniping doesn't go away. One puff of smoke, some varnish from a burned casket, and they're on your case, saying, 'It's a crematory. It's got to be somebody's right leg.' "

After public pressure, the San Rafael City Council last month passed a law limiting crematories to industrial areas. Cremation advocates blame such moves on Americans' innate fear of death.

"We're a death-denying society," said Tom Simonson, past president of the Neptune Society of Northern California, which conducts 6,000 cremations a year. "People won't walk past cemeteries or live near mortuaries. Some turn their backs on hearses from superstition. It's irrational. Because everybody dies."

The nation's first crematory was built in 1874, but about 90 years passed before most Americans would consider an alternative to burials in spit-polished caskets.

In 1963, Jessica Mitford published "The American Way of Death," an expose of avarice in the funeral industry. She recommended cremation as a less-expensive alternative.

"That book paved the way," said Thomas Lynch, a Michigan funeral director, poet and author of books such as "The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade."

"That's when cremation went from a statistical oddity to a growing norm."

That same year, the Catholic Church relaxed its ban on cremations.

As Americans became more mobile, the neighborhood cemetery became less of a symbolic family plot. Said Springer: "It no longer really matters where dear old Mom and Dad are buried, because the kids rarely come home; they're scattered across the world."

In 1982, one in 10 Americans chose to be cremated. By 2002 the figure was one in four, with more than 676,000 cremations performed. By 2025, studies predict, 1.4 million - or 45 percent of Americans - will be cremated.

In 2002, California led the nation with 112,000 cremations, or 48 percent of those who died. Marin County has one of the state's highest cremation rates at 71 percent. California has 177 crematories.

Cremations have become so commonplace that it's no longer surprising to learn that a neighbor has a parent's ashes stored on the fireplace mantel. California, for example, has loosened laws on the disposal of cremated remains. Once limited to cemeteries, ashes now can be scattered on public lands with permission and in waterways, 500 yards from shore.

With costs starting at $650 for a basic cremation, the procedure remains less expensive than traditional burials, which average $5,500, not including gravesite and tombstone. Cremation costs also can be as high as burials depending on added services such as ceremonies and pricey urns.

Fired to 1,800 degrees, the furnace, or retort, reduces most bodies to 6 to 8 pounds of bone fragments. Air used in the process is reheated to 1,600 degrees in a second chamber to further eliminate particulates - and then passes through a smokestack. The bones are then mixed in a blender. "What you get is a substance like sand, which is then placed in a temporary container or urn," Springer said.

Both sides debate just how many particulates pass through the smokestack. "If the average cadaver weighs in at 150 pounds," reads a Web site created in the San Rafael battle, "then almost 250,000 pounds of matter per year will be sent skywards and redistributed on our town."

Industry officials call that a clear exaggeration, saying that what gets released, if anything, are carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and water vapors. Said Springer: "Compared to what goes into the atmosphere each day from car exhaust, this is truly a drop in the bucket."

If operated properly, Springer maintains, crematories emit no smell because air used in the process is heated twice to void the source of would-be odors.

Indeed, in the grand scheme of industrial air pollution, crematories rank low on the alarm list, says Mary Roach, author of the best-selling "Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers." She says the facilities emit half the particulates of a residential fireplace and as much nitrous oxide as a typical restaurant grill.

Of greater concern is mercury from dental fillings, which vaporizes and drifts into the atmosphere at a rate of a half-gram per cremation, according to a study conducted by the industry and the federal government. But at least one other study shows the rate to be much higher, at 3 grams per cremation.

"Compared to power plants and incinerated trash, the dental work of the dead generates a small fraction of the planet's airborne mercury," Roach said.

Still, some are considering alternatives to fire. Swedish researchers are testing a process in which bodies are freeze-dried and composted in a biodegradable coffin made of corn starch. Another experimental procedure, "tissue digestion," would boil a body in a pressure cooker filled with lye.

The EPA has considered regulating emissions from crematories. And though the agency has yet to reach a decision, it says such emissions are comparatively low.

Green Burials - posted March 10, 2005
From Calgary's News and Entertainment WeeklyReduce, reuse and recycle yourself
Some unorthodox but environmentally friendly ways to dispose of the dead
You've spent your whole life separating paper from plastic, eating organic produce, composting kitchen scraps and wearing clothes made of natural fibres. But what do you do when you finally expire?

It's inevitable - we're all going to die. Do you have to abandon your environmental beliefs in order to dispose of your remains? Have no fear - environmentalists have come up with ways to stay green even beyond the grave.

According to the Alberta government's Vital Statistics Office, there were 18,795 deaths in our province last year, resulting in 7,769 burials and 10,841 cremations (the rest were put up in mausoleums or donated to science). One can only imagine how much green space it took to house the dead, not to mention all the trees that went up in smoke.

Natural or "green" burials are not only less expensive than traditional methods of disposing of bodies, but also provide an environmentally friendly alternative.

Once you've donated your organs, you can have your naked, unembalmed remains placed in a biodegradable casket (or if you're the bashful type, laid to rest in an untreated cotton or linen robe, free of buttons, clasps or zippers). Eco-coffins made from recycled paper, cardboard or pine (absent of varnish, fabric, toxic glue, metal hinges or plastic) guarantee that the casket will break down completely once in the ground.

If you would like to avoid using a headstone (something that not only marks the earth, but uses up energy and raw materials to produce), you can have a tree planted in your memory and have yourself immortalized on the web. There are several virtual cemeteries where you can create your own memorial website where friends and family can log on and visit anytime they want.

BETTER BURIAL

All cemeteries in Canada allow for natural burials, although some still require the use of a grave liner (a concrete box surrounding the casket as a way to keep it from sinking). In fact, Calgary is one of the most progressive cities when it comes to natural burials.

"It's really up to the family's discretion," says Derek Maher, business co-ordinator for City of Calgary cemeteries. "Our only regulations are that it has to be a burial of human remains and in a container of some sort. Grave liners are not a requirement."

Calgary even allows two caskets and up to 10 cremated remains per burial space. At this point in time, the city's cemeteries aren't overflowing and the City of Calgary isn't concerned over use of land space. Shacking up in the afterlife is a decision based on one's personal beliefs - environmental, financial or otherwise.

"You don't have to be embalmed or have a marked grave in Calgary," he adds. "If the family wants to scatter cremated remains, we have certain areas for that as well, or they can do it on existing gravesites if they own them. The sky's the limit within the law."

But what if you can't get into the ground right away? Scientist Pieter van Rensburg has designed a prototype for a refrigerated coffin. This practical solution for body storage keeps the cadaver preserved at four degrees centigrade for up to a month, eliminating the need for embalming fluid. The body can then be transferred into an eco-coffin and buried. The product is still in the testing stages but Rensburg's goal is that funeral homes will buy his cool, reusable coffins as a way to promote natural burial options.

However, should Rensburg come up with a successful prototype, he could face moral and legal obstacles. The Alberta Funeral Service Association states that reusing a coffin is illegal in Canada.

OUTSIDE THE BOX

If you're the sort of person who thinks the land is for the living, you may consider cremation the way to go. However, burning one's remains can have a negative effect on the environment, as also destroys vital nutrients in the body that would help fertilize the soil.

The act of incinerating a coffin (containing lining, clothing, plastics, etc.) as well as your embalmed remains not only uses up fuel resources, but releases pollutants into the atmosphere. Although these are released in miniscule amounts, dioxins, mercury emissions (from dental amalgam), hydrogen chloride, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide and sulpher dioxide will be discharged in the form of an invisible gas.

Biologist Susanne Wiigh-Masak of Sweden hopes to give the cremation business some stiff competition by developing ways to compost the human body. Wiigh-Masak's solution is to compost human remains by using liquid nitrogen to freeze and remove water from the body. The body disintegrates into an odourless dust and is placed in a biodegradable container. She has conducted tests on pigs and cows and claims that the compost makes for good potting soil. But how many of us want to use grandma to fertilize our vegetable garden?

A DEAD ISSUE

"I think you'd have a marketing problem," deadpans Dr. Dixon Thompson, an environmental science professor at the University of Calgary who thinks human composting is a perfect example of the extremes some ecologically minded people will go to in their effort to save the planet.

He says green burials are a personal choice, but do little to help the earth's environmental problems. He suggests that if people want to help the environment, they should do something about it when they're alive, such as improving health and wellness, reducing car emissions and eliminating the use of poisonous chemicals.

"Maybe what we should be worrying about isn't the dead people, but what we can do to reduce the body burden of these materials with the living populations," he says. "If not, you're just looking at the wrong end of the lifespan."

Dr. Thompson suggests checking out the Natural Step website to learn effective ways to help the environment and sustain local communities while you're still breathing.

New 'Freeze-dried" ecological cremation option

Science and Spirit Website - posted January/February issue 2002
Body and Soil - Traditional funeral practices harm the environment; green burials let the earth rest in peace. by Jill Neimark

We recycle bottles, cans, and newspapers. Human bodies may be next.

At least, that's what a Swedish environmental biologist recommends: returning corpses to the earth as freeze-dried organic fertilizer, a moral and economical form of "green" burial. Scientist Susanne Wiigh-Masak, a consultant in Sweden, says this type of green burial requires only a few steps: Freeze and then immerse the body in liquid nitrogen to dry it, let it crumble into an odorless, hygienic, fine powder, then slip it into a biodegradable coffin. Within a few months, the coffin and remains are compost.

"This is an ethical way of giving back to nature, and of understanding that death is a possibility for new life," Wiigh-Masak says.

So far the method has been successfully tested on cows and pigs, and it may be ready for humans within the next year-and the Church of Sweden has given the method provisional approval. That's not surprising, says Dieter Hessel, a Presbyterian minister and social ethicist who is director of the Program on Ecology, Justice, and Faith in Princeton, New Jersey. "The doctrine of resurrection of the body in Christian liturgy used to be interpreted literally, but I would say that's changing. More Christians are interpreting it as a unification of the self with God, and that doesn't necessarily require that a body is preserved and buried."

Want to find out more? Visit the Science & Spirit Exploring the Connections page for this story [and others - see side menu].

The new method is part of a growing green burial movement that advocates natural burials, and might someday replace crematoria with compostoria-turning dead bodies into organic mulch and burying them in economical cardboard coffins that quickly degrade. Biodegradable gravestones or specially planted trees can mark burial sites. The green burial movement is already popular in England, which has more than eighty nature reserve burial grounds. But green burial is just beginning to spark an interest here in America.

Traditional methods of burial are not environmentally friendly: Toxic embalming fluids, as well as the copper or lead in expensive caskets, can leak into the ground and water supply. Wiigh-Masak says it may take as long as sixty years for an embalmed body in a coffin to decompose. According to the Rainforest Action Network, approximately three hundred thousand wooden caskets are made in the United States each year, using as many as 50 million board feet of wood. And traditional cemeteries often require the use of lawn mowers, fertilizers, and herbicides.

Crematoria release harmful chemicals into the atmosphere-including carcinogenic hydrocarbons from coffins and mercury vapor from dental fillings. The typical body in a crematorium burns at about 1600 degrees Fahrenheit for three to five hours. A 1990 Swiss study by the Electric Power Research Institute found that mercury vapor during cremation of a person with the average number of amalgam fillings was toxic enough to poison the fish in five 10-acre lakes. A 1999 report from San Francisco's Public Works Department found that crematoria were the third-highest contributor of mercury in the region. Cremation "turns the body from an organic to an inorganic form. Ashes are not food for living soil," Wiigh-Masak says.

Yet in the United States, where cremation is cost-efficient, more than one thousand crematoria collectively conduct five hundred thousand cremations a year. "Forty percent of baby boomers list cremation as their choice for disposal of their remains," says Billy Campbell, a physician and director of a green cemetery in South Carolina. But he sees green burial as growing in popularity. "Our market research suggests the potential [green burial] market for boomers is in excess of 10 percent of what is now a $20 billion annual market."

Burial rites have deep roots in both religion and science, and often have to satisfy the aims of both. In stunning but barren Tibet, where the land is rocky and ground burial is impossible, bodies are given sky burials. It is believed that the vultures that come to feed are really goddesses called dakinis. Egyptians embalmed the body so that the soul could return to it after a three-thousand-year journey, but the practice was also a sanitary solution to burying the dead in the often-flooded Nile valley. Babylonians, Persians, and Syrians preserved their dead in jars of honey or wax, which prevented bacteria from flourishing.

Cremation was probably invented around 3000 B.C.E., and was the most common method of burial in ancient Greece and Rome. It has become increasingly popular as a sanitary, economical and space-saving method of disposal, but the Roman Catholic Church banned it in 1886, and Jewish custom saw it as a mutilation of the body.

Traditional Jewish burial simply consisted of wrapping the body and applying oils and spices. "Embalming is not traditionally associated with Jewish, Islamic, and Baha'i burials," says Dave Lowe, founder of the Ozarks Full Life Church and the North America Woodland Burial Society. "These faiths require a simple burial that is dignified and done within a specific time, and reflects man and his relationship to God.

In the past thirty years, the commercial promotion of embalming has increased in the United States. In essence, we have sold embalming just as we have Coca-Cola."

Lowe says he's witnessed green burials in which spouses, children, parents, and friends were involved in the loving, respectful act of the preparation of the body.

"It's a much more complete spiritual journey than found in regular commercial burials," Lowe says.

At Memorial Ecosystems, in the Blue Ridge Mountains, the Ramsey Preserve functions as a green cemetery. "We encourage clients to see a healthy nature preserve as their real monument," says Campbell, the preserve's director. Gravestones are often crafted from stone occurring naturally in the area. This is in sharp contrast to velvet-lined caskets made of fiberglass ("protecting the body from the environment, and the environment from the body, for countless tomorrows," as Michigan's Oak Grave International boasts), or burial vaults that are as secure as bunkers-made of concrete bonded to plastic and copper and designed to resist 5,000 pounds of pressure per square inch.

Freeze-drying and composting the dead would certainly be more costly than a simple green burial, but a freeze-dried body produces up to 65 pounds of pure organic matter that would enrich the soil. "The remains make splendid potting soil," says Wiigh-Masak. "We have a common responsibility to take care of the nature that was created by the God we believe in."

BBC news - posted February 9, 2004
Swedes offer freeze-dry burials

The environmentally-conscientious could soon ensure they don't end up polluting the earth after they die, thanks to a company in Sweden.

Concerns about the environmental impact of embalming fluids or cremation have led Promessa Organic to come up with a chilling alternative.

Their method involves freeze-drying the corpse in liquid nitrogen.

Sound vibrations then shatter the brittle remains into a powder that can be "returned to the ecological cycle".

Biologist and head of Promessa Organic Susanne Wiigh-Maesak said she hoped to promote environmental and existential awareness.

"Our ecological burial reduces environmental impact on some of our most important resources; our water, air and soil," she explains on her company website.

"At the same time it provides us with deeper insights regarding the ecological cycle, and greater understanding of and respect for life on earth."

Compost

After the freezing process, the odourless powdery remains are laid in a coffin made of corn starch and buried in a shallow grave.

Ms Wiigh-Maesak says the soil "turns the coffin and its contents into compost in about six months" which means relatives can then plant a bush or tree on the spot.

"The compost formed can then be taken up by the plant... The plant stands as a symbol of the person, and we understand where the body went," she said.

Ms Wiigh-Maesak says she would very much like to become a white rhododendron.

The company has applied for a patent on her method in 35 countries.

Ms Wiigh-Maesak said the authorities in Joenkoeping, 328 km (204 miles) south-west of Stockholm, were ready to start operating its first freeze-drying facility in the next couple of years.

The head of cemetery administration in Joenkoeping said younger people were keen on the idea as "green burials" are becoming popular in Sweden.

Right to Die articles

SocietyGuardian.co. - posted September 2, 2004
Swiss euthanasia charity helps 22 Britons to die - John Martin

Swiss "assisted suicide" charity Dignitas has helped 22 Britons to die over the past two years, SocietyGuardian.co.uk can reveal today. The news comes amid fresh indications that opposition to changing the law to allow euthanasia is softening.

Dignitas, which is based in Zurich, was founded in 1998 to help people with chronic diseases "die with dignity". The euthanasia organisation was first heard of in the UK when it helped Reg Crew, who was suffering from motor neurone disease, to die in January last year.

Crew was the second Briton to be helped by Dignitas. Since the publicity that surrounded his case, there has been a sharp increase in the number of British people travelling to Zurich to die.

Figures seen by SocietyGuardian.co.uk show that, since October 2002, 22 people have been helped to die. British membership of Dignitas has also shown a sharp increase, rising from 90 at the end of 2002 to 557 last month.

Britons now make up 13% of the charity's total membership of 4,154 people in 52 countries. Around 20% of people who become members go on to be helped to die by the organisation.

Lesley Close, whose brother was the fifth Briton helped to die by Dignitas, said: "The disproportionate interest shown by UK citizens is clear from the membership figures as well as the number of deaths.

"This does not reflect a unique British position: it reflects the fact that Reg Crew's bravery in going public with his journey to Zurich opened a door which showed ordinary people with terminal illnesses - people like my brother - that there was a way to end their suffering with dignity."

Since its establishment, Dignitas has helped 304 people to die, around two thirds of them from outside Switzerland.

Meanwhile, a survey published today, commissioned by the Voluntary Euthanasia Society, found that 50% of people would consider going abroad to receive medical assistance to die if they were suffering unbearably from a terminal illness.

The survey results come as 80,000 expressions of support for a change in UK law were today submitted to a select committee investigating a private member's bill put forward by Lord Joffe, which would legalise euthanasia.

Deborah Annetts, the chief executive of the VES, said: "This indicates that people are prepared to seek alternatives when the law provides none.

"It is tragic enough that people should feel they have to make such difficult journeys when they are so ill, but to know that any relatives or friends who help them could then be jailed is a cruel uncertainty.

"The director of public prosecutions must stop prevaricating and issue guidance as to whether they will prosecute relatives." Lord Joffe's Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill would allow people to die at the time of their choosing once they have proved that they are in the right state of mind.

SocietyGuardian.co.uk © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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