GreenYour.com

Fashion need not take a back seat to function at a green funeral and burial. The biodegradable casket or burial shroud you choose can be as individual as you are, and will bury fewer resources than a traditional casket made from copper, steel, or hardwoods. Plus, a simple cardboard or pine casket will break down quickly and harmlessly become part of the earth, a requisite for burial in a green cemetery.

Find it! Biodegradable caskets

In addition to the products listed here, you can find links to simple wood caskets and burial shrouds at the Green Burial Council, Funeral Site.com, and The Centre for Natural Burial.

Before you buy

In 1984, the Funeral Rule was put into effect by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Essentially, the law ensures families are not misled into making extravagant or unnecessary purchases while planning a funeral. The law also gives families the right to purchase caskets or other goods from third-party vendors, and a funeral director must accept any casket bought from someone else without charging a handling fee. The law doesn't apply to cemeteries, however, unless they sell funeral goods. Keep in mind that traditional cemeteries may have restrictions on the types of caskets accepted. For instance, some may require caskets to be made out of specific materials and may also require the installation of a cement vault or grave liner to prevent the grave from sinking in the future. Green cemeteries, on the other hand, only accept biodegradable caskets or simple shrouds for burial.

Buying biodegradable caskets helps you go green because…

• They avoid the use of metal caskets that contribute to the mining industry’s environmental damage.
• They minimize the use of lumber and avoid the use of hardwood cut from tropical and old growth forests.
• They break down more readily in the soil and, therefore, meet the requirements for burial in a green cemetery.
• Purchasing simple wooden caskets and fabric shrouds can support local businesses and reduce the need for fossil fuels in shipping heavy metal and wood caskets.

In 2007, more than 1 million of the 1.7 million caskets made were manufactured from steel, a metal alloy composed primarily of iron.[1] Copper and other metal alloys are also used, but in much smaller amounts. All metals are mined from the earth and are nonrenewable resources. The extraction and processing of these resources contributes to the 1 to 2 billion tons of mine waste that accumulate annually, and has polluted more than 3,400 miles of streams and more than 440,000 acres of land.[2] In 2004, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ranked the metal mining industry as the nation's worst toxic polluter. The good news is that steel can be recycled repeatedly and, according to the Steel Recycling Institute, all steel products produced today contain some percentage of recycled steel. Yet, it’s worth noting that steel caskets buried in cemeteries divert 90,000 tons of steel from the recycling stream each year.[3]

Hardwoods (woods that come from deciduous trees and have a closed grain), such as maple, cherry, black walnut, and redwood, are also used to make traditional caskets. More than 39 million board feet of hardwood lumber are used to build approximately 300,000 wooden caskets each year.[4] Laid end to end, those boards would reach from Los Angeles to Cairo. High-end caskets are often made from mahogany, an endangered rain forest tree that grows sporadically so loggers destroy 28 trees for every mahogany tree they harvest.[5] Forest ecosystems are critical: they filter the air, stabilize climate by absorbing CO₂, and provide habitat for 90 percent of all land-dwelling plant and animals species.[6]

Simple caskets that consume fewer natural resources and energy to produce are marketed as biodegradable. They are typically manufactured as plain boxes from common woods such as wicker and pine. Some are also certified by the Forest Stewardship Council as harvested from sustainably managed forests. Many cardboard coffins are made of recycled content and biodegrade within three months.

External Links

• MSNBC - Green Graves Give Back to Nature
• ENN - Biodegradable Caskets: Composting your relatives?
• The Natural Death Center: A nonprofit in Britain that operates as an independent funeral advice service. The Center provides information on family-organized, environmentally friendly funerals.