Maybe you already know how you want to be buried when you die, and maybe you haven’t thought about it. Or perhaps like me, you didn’t think about it much—until you watched the HBO series, Six Feet Under. In season 4 of the show, one of the main characters defies his wife’s family and gives his deceased wife her wish to have a “green burial.” A what, you ask? I didn’t know either, but the idea seemed radical as I watched him dig a grave and bury her body sans embalming or a casket.

But this was how nearly everyone was buried throughout history—that is, up until the Civil War when the families of Union soldiers requested to bury their own and Dr. Thomas Holmes popularized embalming with arsenic. Formaldehyde was discovered in 1867 and is now the standard, but it’s also a known carcinogen and, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council, will be outlawed in the European Union by 2010. Even today, there is no law that requires embalming. It also goes against the practices of certain religious groups, such as Jews, Muslims, and Baha’is.

Comprising more than 30 percent of U.S. burials in 2005 according to the National Funeral Directors Association, cremation is an increasingly popular method of caring for the dead. It’s no wonder, considering cremation is generally cheaper. The average U.S. funeral now costs more than $6,000. Also, cremation doesn’t require burial space and can be more personal depending on what the family chooses to do with the cremains. But cremation still isn’t considered environmentally sound because of the high level of carbon emissions as well as concerns about mercury pollution from dental amalgam fillings.

There’s no doubt that the idea of green burials is bigger in England than in the United States. Since the movement took off there in 1994, the U.K. has built more than 120 green cemeteries, called “woodland burials.” In America, the first green cemetery was created by Dr. Billy Campbell in 1998. Located in upstate South Carolina and known as Ramsey Creek Preserve, it was the first to be approved by the Green Burial Council, which has developed a certification process to maintain ecological standards.

The council has two levels of standards—that of a Conservation Burial Ground and a Natural Burial Ground. The former requires the involvement of an established conservation partner and the latter is perhaps less stringent but still requires that “monuments (if used it all) must be living (i.e., trees and wild flowers) or ecologically functional (i.e., field stones or boulders)” and that excavation practices minimize impact. Advocates of natural burial emphasize not only the ecological concerns of traditional burial but also the sustainability issues of cemeteries and rising costs. Green burials can be performed for nearly half the price of a traditional funeral.

Right now there are only nine states that have certified green burial grounds, and this does not include Virginia—yet. The Funeral Consumers Alliance of the Virginia Blue Ridge is a volunteer consumer-rights advocacy group in our region “devoted to the consumer’s right to choose meaningful after-death arrangements with-out emotional or financial exploitation.”

Although the group approached a Blacksburg cemetery with a proposal to provide space for green burials, they ultimately declined, so unless a person owns land on which they want to be buried, there aren’t any commercial locations that permit a true green burial in the NRV. However, Isabel Berney, the group’s executive director, maintains that it’s still possible to have an ecologically friendly burial if you forego embalming, select a biodegradable casket (made of soft wood, cardboard, silk, or bamboo), and request that if a concrete vault is required, it be set upside down without the lid. Trev Smith, a carpenter and one of the group’s members, always has on hand one simple wood casket with rope handles, available for $400 and deliverable within 50 miles of Blacksburg.

Membership to the Funeral Consumers Alliance costs around $25 and includes an End-of-Life planning kit, information and forms for organ/body donation, a price survey of funeral services in the area, and a subscription to their quarterly newsletter. So even if a true green burial doesn’t seem right for you, it’s important to know that there are options and groups like this are available to help you plan for these in advance.

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BOOKS
Grave Matters: A Journey Through the Modern Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial by Mark Harris -
The first book ever written about “green” burials follows the fast-moving trend that embraces affordable, personal, eco-friendly alternatives to the highly toxic, mass-produced modern method.

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach - This “raucously funny (and educational) New York Times bestseller takes you to all the places you thought no corpse had gone before.”

The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade by Thomas Lynch - A chronicle of small-town life and death told through the eyes of a poet who is also an undertaker.

DVDs
Lasting Images: Alternatives to Traditional Burials – A 52-minute documentary by Hammond Hendrix that highlights the “many ways to remember and honor the dead without the ‘traditional’ costly service at the funeral home. The film includes segments on using cremated remains to rebuild endangered marine reefs, a tour of the country’s first ‘green’ cemetery and nature preserve, and touching interviews with families who approach death creatively and personally.”

Six Feet Under – This Emmy- and Golden Globe-wining HBO series about the Fisher family funeral business ran for five seasons, and is now in syndication on Bravo.

LINKS
The Funeral Consumers Alliance of the Virginia Blue Ridge

Green Burial Council

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Taryn Chase doesn’t care for embalming or cremation, but she still wants to have a giant celtic cross monument above her final resting place.