How To Die Eco-Style

Dead people live much more sustainably than the rest of us do. Despite that, we here back in the world of the living have managed to make the business of dying an environmental calamity.

Most people think they only have two options for burying their loved ones — a traditional vault and casket burial, or cremation, neither of which are environmentally friendly.

That’s why when my now deceased friend, Kate, sat down with her two adult children and told them, “Just toss me into the garden and don’t spend a dime,” they both just laughed. She persisted, explaining her thinking: She loved gardening. She hated wasting money. She knew cremation was un-environmental. And most importantly, she didn’t want her kids to make a fuss.

Traditional burials dump a lot into the ground. In the U.S., 77,000 trees are chopped down for caskets, and 90,000 tons of steel, plus 1.6 million tons of concrete used for caskets, are plowed into the ground every year, according to research by National Geographic.

Conventional cemeteries, also known as a “lawn cemeteries,” have become an unsustainable repository for all the steel, brass, copper, hardwood, plastic, nails, vinyl, fiberglass and reinforced concrete that goes into caskets and vaults. Not to mention that they occupy valuable land. Funeral director Caroline Schrank, of gotoripple.com, sums it up succinctly. “They’re basically a landfill.”

Then there’s the highly carcinogenic embalming fluid, containing ethylene glycol (antifreeze), and formaldehyde (now banned in the European Union), which increases risks of leukemia and brain cancer. This didn’t strike me as especially problematic, given who was getting the infusion. The issue is that every year in the U.S., 4.3 million gallons of embalming fluid seeps into the soil and aquifer, contaminating our ecosystem.

On Long Island, our drinking water faces enough challenges already without these spectacularly toxic chemicals adding to the mix.

Unfortunately, cremation doesn’t fare much better. Despite its reputation for being an eco-friendly alternative, cremations tends to have an outsized carbon footprint. They involve running a furnace at nearly 2,000 degrees for up to two hours and spewing about 880 pounds of CO2 into the air, according to the Green Burial Council. That’s an astonishing amount of CO2, especially coming from the dearly departed.

Luckily, because more than half of all Americans are now seeking more sustainable funerals, the funeral industry is taking note and offering a wider array of greener choices.

While there’s no one-size-fits-all formula, your basic green burial eschews metal grave liners and conspicuous headstones. It avoids embalming, expensive metal caskets and concrete vaults, replacing them with biodegradable caskets made of simple pine wood, bamboo, wicker or often an unbleached burial shroud.

The Green Burial Council estimates that burying a body naturally wrapped in a biodegradable shroud not only avoids carbon emissions, but actually sequesters 25 pounds of CO2.

“When we learn that our bodies can contribute to carbon sequestration, it flips the switch for a lot of people,” says green burial advocate Lee Webster.

Cemeteries themselves now come in all different shades of green. The most basic avoids energy-intensive mowing, fertilizing, watering, herbicides and pesticides. Graves are often dug by hand rather than using heavy gas guzzling machinery. A lot of cemeteries allow you to plant a tree over the grave as well.

“Conservation cemeteries” take it a step further and act as wildlife preserves, conserving land for plants and wild animals. Here the burial grounds are restored to their natural condition and protected forever, the ultimate legacy to leave future generations.

Another option is a forest burial at a designates burial ground, where you literally become part of the forest. Instead of visiting a “grave site,” your loved ones visit a whole forest or meadow.

While not technically “green,” Oakland Cemetery in Sag Harbor is a good example of a graveyard that’s green in all but name. They don’t require caskets or vaults. They’ve never used irrigation, mowing or pesticides and they dig the graves by hand.

“Shrouds are fine, as long as you’re buried in something,” says Ken Yardley of Yardley & Pino Funeral Homes. “It’s an old fashioned, rural cemetery.”

Choosing a greener funeral does more than enrich the planet. It also spares your loved ones from getting hit with a big bill. Embalming, vaults and coffins can reach upward of $8,500, according to the National Funeral Directors Association. By comparison, green burials, range from $500 to $5,000, with a simple wooden casket costing somewhere from $800 to $1,000.

The most important part of a green burial, or any burial for that matter, is to make a plan well ahead of time. Have a conversation about what you want. Write it down. And set aside the funds for it.

“Do you really want to leave this decision to your loved ones on what’s basically the worst day of their lives?” asks Schrank.

In the United States, only 24 percent of Americans plan their own funeral. My mother was one of them. She left a file titled, ‘Funeral’ detailing everything down to what hors d’oeuvres to serve at the reception and what music to play in the church, including Willy Nelson’s “On The Road Again.” These are not last wishes one could anticipate.

Not having a plan is also expensive.

“The decision process around burials is meant to be confusing because the funeral industry makes money off confusion,” says Schrank. “Funeral homes will tell you, ‘Oh don’t buy this cheaper pine casket because it will fall apart. Then when you buy a plot, there’s the opening fee, then there are maintenance fees. It goes on and on.”

If you do choose cremation, make it more sustainable by making compost. Human composting sounds admittedly creepy, but I believe there’s something spiritually rejuvenating about knowing that we’re nourishing flowers and trees, creating life out of death. Also, while scattering ones ashes seems like a lovely ritual, the pH and sodium levels in cremated ash are far too high to enrich plant life, and often kill it.

Avoid biodegradable urns. Moving on in an urn made from pink Himalayan rock salt may sound fashionably sustainable, but biodegradable urns release toxic ashes as they break down.

For the more adventurous journey to the afterlife, there’s a dizzying array of ways to go, some of which are more eco-novelty than eco-friendly. You can have the carbon from your ashes turned into real diamonds. Or freeze dry your body through a process called promession. Consider turning your cremated remains into a memorial reef ball, replenishing coral reefs that help foster marine life.

Once the stuff of science fiction, but now popular with the likes of Beverly Hills 90210 Luke Perry, mushroom detoxifying suits use fungi to speed up decomposition. This method has the unique advantages of helping to eliminate chemicals from the embalming fluid that would otherwise seep into the soil. (Of course that begs the question — why not just avoid the toxic embalming bath in the first place?)

After a thorough exploration of the weird world of alternative burials, I’m drawn to the simplicity of a natural shrouded burial. It seems the greenest and least complicated way to kick the bucket.

And as for Kate, she ended up getting exactly what she wanted. Her daughter found out how to conduct a home burial, which although legal in the state of New York, can take some planning. Today, Kate’s son sits out in the garden and drinks his morning coffee with her. Her daughter just planted yellow pansies.