Green death might sound like a rather gruesome idea.  Actually I find it fascinating - it was the most interesting part of The New Green Consumer Guide to research.  And I've found out quite a lot more since.  Here are some thoughts for starters.... 

Click here to see Death Tips from The New Green Consumer Guide. 

INTERESTING THINGS - GREEN DEATH

Bizarrely, one of the most interesting subjects I researched for The New Green Consumer Guide was 'green death'.  In April 2007 I made the key note speech at the Green Funeral Exhibition organised by the Natural Death Centre - see article in My Blog.   On display were a range of coffins from plain cardboard to ones made from banana leaves and water hyacinth.  And key points for discussion included the horrors of embalming, mercury emissions from crematoria and why we bury bodies too deep in the ground for worms and bacteria to break them down. 

RESOMATION - Water rather than Fire....

Resomation is an interesting alternative to cremation – instead of using fire and reducing the body to ashes, it uses water and you’re left with a fine white powder.  And it has real environmental advantages.  For example - no toxic emissions.  Did you know that 11% of mercury contamination in the North Sea comes from crematoria?  Metal joints, amalgam or gold fillings all come out in tact after resomation - they can even be used again!  But perhaps the biggest advantage is a dramatic cut in carbon emissions. Burning an average body produces about 44kg of CO2, with another 50kgs of CO2 from the gas fuel used in crematoria and another 83kg from burning a wooden coffin.  With resomation there's no CO2 produced from the body or the coffin because the body is broken down in the water and ultimately mixes with other nutrients to go back into the eco-system - and no coffin is needed.  And the CO2 emissions from the process - which involves warming the water are one sixth of what's produced by crematoria.  I think this could be the greenest option but I'm waiting to hear about the amount of energy needed to make the alkaline solution in which the body decomposes....

ARTICLE I WROTE ON GREEN DEATH……APRIL 2007

Pet Treatment

I recently met a Canadian who said his wife spent $500 on burying a hamster! Part of that was the vet's fee for finding out that the hamster was going to snuff it. Then there was more to pay to help the little creature along....Now I'm not anti hamsters but I'm also not convinced that it's worth spending large sums of money on helping them pass into the next world. And I have to admit that elaborate funeral arrangements for larger pets strike me as a waste of resources too. Looking on the internet, I discovered that there's a booming industry in pet coffins, urns, caskets, memorials and even pet DNA necklaces - the DNA is suspended in a coloured liquid.

I'm afraid I think that our fear of death leads us to some pretty bad decisions - from an environmental point of view - when disposing of our loved ones. And given that we do some weird things when burying our pets, perhaps it should be no surprise that there are some odd practices for disposing of humans too.

Embalming is barmy

Bizarrely, I found that researching death issues for The New Green Consumer Guide was particularly fascinating. One thing that particularly horrified me was the practice of embalming. What this actually means is that they remove the blood from the body. The blood is then replaced with coloured formaldehyde, which is a toxic ingredient. The idea is to make your body look more 'life-like' and to preserve the body longer. But even the people I've talked to in the funeral trade say that it's very rarely necessary from a practical point of view.

Environmentally this process is not so great. For burial it can contaminate the land and in cremation cause more pollution. The really shocking thing is that it's standard practice for the UK 's two biggest funeral companies - the Co-op and Dignity. They call it 'hygienic treatment'.

Burial space

Slowing down the rate that bodies de-compose is a pretty bad idea when we're running out of burial grounds. One solution to this is recycling the ones we've got. Apparently this is hugely contentious even though it was common practice a couple of centuries ago. Grave diggers would start at one side of a churchyard, work their way across and then start again when they'd filled up the spaces.

Today, a number of European countries re-use graves. They dig up body remains after about 20 years and store the bones in an ossuary - meanwhile using the grave for another corpse. But to do this you need to put bodies closer to the surface, for speedier decomposition. If you're put six feet under there is very little air and therefore no worms and pretty few microbes working away to turn us to mulch.

In the UK the idea of 'natural burial grounds' is becoming more popular. These could help reduce over-crowding, if they're not solely designated as graveyards with memorial stones. The modern approach has to be to use these areas for tourism, leisure or agriculture rather than somewhere solely reserved for the dead and their relatives - life goes on.

In the fire

Like 70% of the British population my father was cremated. We sprinkled his ashes in our garden and planted a beautiful tree on top. Our family didn't go to the crematorium - we weren't interested in that part of the process. So why I wondered did we pay the bearers to put on sombre costume to carry the coffin to the furnace? Come to think of it, why did he need to be put in a coffin - and have that burnt too? (I've since discovered that crematoria are designed to receive bodies on a solid hard board, which is why coffins are necessary.) We didn't feel able to make bold decisions once he had died. My mother didn't want to challenge the funeral directors about what they wore, about the coffin or indeed about removing his gold teeth and fillings.

Did you know that 11% of mercury contamination in the North Sea comes from crematoria pollution - from fillings? And it's predicted this will increase to a third of contamination in the next decade because the generation dying have well filled teeth

Choosing how to go

We need to make decisions about our funerals when we're alive and well. Grieving relatives are not best placed to challenge tradition - and if they're going to do it they want to be certain it's something that would be appreciated by their loved one.

Apart from burial or cremation - which are the two main options today - the biggest decision will be what sort of coffin to choose. In The New Green Consumer Guide, I've given an eco-rating to different types of coffin oak to wood chip to cardboard and even bamboo. Top of my list went to ones made from recycled newspapers - using a waste material has to be better than growing something from scratch.  

GREEN DEATH LINKS (More to come)

NATURAL DEATH HANDBOOK
If you want information on 'green death' and burial you couldn't do better than to buy The Natural Death Handbook. 


Woodland Burial Parks Ltd offer families the opportunity to choose a burial, an ash scattering or an ash interment within existing mature woodland. Specialist management techniques enhance and improve the woodland, and graves are chosen individually either at the time of need or in advance by those wishing to plan their own funerals. Winner of the Green Cemetery of the Year Award for the last three years, the original park is in Colney, Norfolk, while a second park in Epping Forest opened in 2007. The third park, near Beaconsfield in Bucks, is opening later in 2008. Further information can be found on the website www.woodlandburialparks.co.uk