Fungi are not fussy diners. Cardboard, plastic, jet fuel and asbestos — fungi will devour them all. In 2007, scientists studying Chernobyl’s blighted landscape discovered a fungus capable of “eating” radiation. It almost goes without saying, then, that fungi have little trouble decomposing us.
Dutch inventor Bob Hendrikx is harnessing the power of fungi by using mycelium — vast webs of fungal threads that normally live underground — as an alternative to traditional wooden coffins. His environmentally friendly “living coffin,” he says, is not only carbon negative to grow, but decomposes in six weeks, rather than the 20 years it can take for a regular wooden coffin. The coffin also gets to work decomposing the body, speeding up the process by which nature can absorb the nutrients of the deceased.
Hendrikx’s company Loop is not the first to hitch itself to the eco-hearse. Cremated human remains can be placed in pods to grow trees or cast into artificial coral reefs, while coffins made from wicker, macramé and cardboard are all on the market. Woodland burials, where coffins and clothing are made from all-natural materials, are also experiencing a resurgence. And when actor Luke Perry died in 2019 he was buried in a “mushroom suit” designed to help decompose his body. But using mycelium to enclose the body in a “living coffin” is a novel approach.
The motivation is simple: some funeral practices are bad for the environment. In the US alone over 4 million gallons of embalming fluid are used every year for burials, according to the non-profit Green Burial Council. Embalming fluid contains toxic ingredients such as formaldehyde, which can leach into the ground.
Cremation has its own issues, releasing considerable amounts of carbon into the atmosphere and possibly heavy metals if present in the body (the US Environmental Protection Agency calculated that nearly 2 tons of mercury, found in dental fillings, were emitted by human cremations in 2014).
“What really frustrates me is that when I die, I’m polluting the Earth. I’m waste,” says Hendrikx. He describes the body as a “walking trash bin of 219 chemicals” even before factoring in the metals, wood and glue typically used in coffins.
“Our current burial processes lead to material depletion, soil pollution and CO2 emissions,” he adds. “We created a super-industrial process for one of the most natural processes on Earth.”
But given the right treatment, the body becomes “a beautiful bag of compost.” Mushrooms, Hendrikx says, “are known as the world’s largest recycler,” turning dead organic matter into new plant life. “Why are we not using this?”
Loop’s “Living Cocoon” is comprised of lab-cultivated mycelium, woodchips and secret ingredients, placed in a mold and grown into a coffin shape over the course of a week. Once completed, moss — full of microorganisms — is packed into the bottom, onto which the body is laid. Once the structure comes in contact with damp soil the mycelium comes to life and the process begins.
Loop has partnered with biomaterials pioneers Ecovative to test the product, which Hendrikx says will decompose in 45 days. “It’s not gone,” he adds, “because it’s then working on your body.” He says calculations made by Loop with expert input indicate a corpse will fully decompose in two to three years.
The coffin, which is manufactured in Delft, is on sale for €1,495 ($1,700). Joerg Vieweg, an owner of funeral homes in Germany, is one of Hendrikx’s customers. Vieweg says the mycelium coffin is “a good example of how to achieve something ecologically with little change in the tradition of farewell.”
“(It) does not fundamentally change the process and traditions (of preparing a body for burial),” he adds, which makes burial in a mycelium coffin more socially acceptable.
To date around 100 burials have been conducted with the Living Cocoon in the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium, says Hendrikx. He says laws in some European countries are more favorable for the coffin than others. “It’s a super-conservative market,” he adds, “the same as it’s ever been.”
“The challenge at this moment is how can we convince families to organize a sustainable funeral?” she adds. “Consumers are not aware of (sustainable funeral options), because the problem is, how many times do you organize a funeral? There’s only once or twice in your life that you’re responsible.”
Van Haastert says funeral companies in the Netherlands are now training their employees to discuss climate-neutral options with bereaved families, and she hopes new legislative guidelines will be introduced for alternative funerals.
While she describes Loop’s product as “niche” at present, she speculates that “within five years (people) will ask more for these kinds of coffins.”
Hendrikx believes he’s found a positive solution, and as Loop looks to expand, it aims to create coffins using fungi samples local to their final destination to ensure they have optimal environmental impact. “Instead of doing a bad thing, or less bad thing (after death), you can actually do something good,” he says, making the case for his invention.
Vieweg believes the funeral industry is “facing a tremendous change of paradigm.”
“People are creative and look(ing) for sustainable solutions to protect our environment,” she says. “The rituals that have been lived up to now will also survive and new ones will develop. To experience this process is exciting and challenging.”
Leaving a legacy that ensures a sustainable earth for our loved ones and our communities.
By Mallory McDuff
When I was in middle school, my father built a prototype of a pine casket, which fit in the palm of his hand, the wood sanded smooth to the touch. My mother kept her jewelry in the box, which sat on her dresser for years.
“My funeral should be a celebration of life, and I’d like to be buried without embalming or a concrete vault,” my dad told us. “I hope to build my own casket like this before I die.”
At the time, his plans for death felt like background noise, the idiosyncrasies of a parent in a teenager’s eyes.
Then, in my late 30s, my parents died in mirror-image cycling accidents, hit by teen drivers on rural Alabama roads, two years apart. My three siblings and I managed to fulfill my father’s wishes, which gave us a way forward through our shock and then grief.
Fast forward to my 50s, with teenagers of my own: I’d been invited to share the story of my father’s green burial at a conference to help others plan ahead for their own deaths. I looked out at 100 people gathered in the parish hall of my Episcopal church, the Cathedral of All Souls, in Asheville, N.C.
Yet the conference soon revealed I had work of my own to do on this very topic of life and death.
During a session about end-of-life directives, a close friend whispered to me, “I need to revise my will since my ex is still in it!”
My final wishes didn’t align with my values
I hadn’t looked at my final documents since I’d drafted them 10 years earlier, after my own divorce and my parents’ passing. As the workshops and breakout groups proceeded, my face became flushed: I’d chosen cremation for its affordability and convenience — as straightforward as calling in and picking up a prescription.
My final wishes didn’t align with my values as an environmental educator or the example my father had given me.
One of the presentations focused on home funerals, keeping a vigil for the deceased at home, rather than taking the body directly to a mortuary.
Discovering a conservation cemetery
“No state law requires embalming,” Yongue said. “And it’s legal to transport a body in your car.”
She shared heartbreaking, but intimate, images of a teenage girl in a white dress helping carry the shrouded body of her mother to the gravesite at Carolina Memorial Sanctuary, a conservation cemetery which Younge founded that protects the land in perpetuity through conservation easements.
I’d walked the land at this burial ground, which felt like strolling in a wooded preserve, rather than a manicured lawn, as the graves are surrounded by native grasses, trees and shrubs.
I turned to the friend next to me. Our oldest daughters, now in college, had gone to preschool together. Her eyes, much like mine, were filled with tears.
During my session, I described how my father discovered that his neighborhood cemetery in Fairhope, Ala., didn’t require a concrete vault in the grave. One month after my mother was killed, my dad read to us a two-page typed document outlining details for his future funeral — like his bluegrass band at the burial and plenty of shovels so that young and old could close the grave.
He was in the best shape of his life, but wanted us to have a plan. When he was killed two years later (despite biking with a fluorescent vest and reflective lights on the shoulder of the road), we followed his wishes for a burial that restored, rather than degraded, the Earth.
“My sister and I are likely the only graduates of Fairhope High School who’ve prepared our father’s body for burial in the refrigerated room of the local funeral home,” I told the audience.
My dad’s body had been transferred to the coroner’s office and then the mortuary. Yet the funeral home director agreed to let us wrap him in my mother’s linens, according to his plan, and place his body in a handcrafted pine casket, constructed by a friend who pulled an all-nighter for the job.
Providing a plan for my final wishes
After listening to the other speakers at the conference, I wanted to provide the same type of plan for my two daughters, 22 and 15, who seemed more comfortable with emergency-room resuscitations on “Grey’s Anatomy” than talking about our own mortality. But as a single mom, I knew this journey would need to include them both, even if they weren’t ready to fully listen.
When I returned home that night, I opened the file cabinet in my bedroom and took out the folder containing my will, cremation directive and advance care directive. My final wishes for cremation didn’t seem to fit me in my 50s, given my children’s uncertain future in a climate emergency.
I’d completely forgotten my instructions for a party after my funeral with beer and barbecue from Okie Dokie’s Smokehouse, a restaurant I loved when my young children needed a quick dinner on a school night. (Per the menu, it offered “swine dining.”)
Since the conference, I’d learned about alternatives to burning fossil fuels to cremate a body into pulverized bones and ashes. While more than 50% of people in the U.S. opt for flame cremation, I’d heard about aquamation—also called alkaline hydrolysis—that uses water and lye to dissolve a body, rather than fossil fuels, and is legal in 20 states.
I’d also read about a “body farm” only an hour away at Western Carolina University, where you could donate your body to contribute to research on decomposition without the embalming required by medical science. The research at this body farm had contributed to the innovative process called human composting, which transforms a body into nutrient-rich soil, now legal in Washington state and Colorado. I wanted to know more.
That night, I decided to embark on a one-year journey to revise my final wishes with climate and community in mind. My directives for my body would have to be affordable and acceptable to my daughters.
During the year, I’d end up discovering a cemetery on the college campus where I live, attending home funerals, interviewing end-of-life doulas, volunteering as a parking attendant at the conservation cemetery and talking to my daughters about the end of our lives, just as my father did with me. My book, “Our Last Best Act: Planning for the End of Our Lives to Protect the People and Places We Love,” tells of that yearlong research.
When I told my youngest about the possibility of a home vigil after I died, she was not amused. “I will sleep in a Motel 6 if that happens,” she said. “I can pay for it myself!”
In that moment, I saw myself — a teenager rolling my eyes as my father handed me a smooth pine casket to hold in my palm — not knowing what tools I’d need to equip me for the years ahead.
I didn’t anticipate my parents’ deaths or the climate crisis we now face. But I have learned from this search that final wishes are an individual decision, a family decision and an ecological decision, with personal stakes affecting both climate and community.
It’s not a metaphor to say we are all one body on this planet. As my father said, “I want a funeral that involves my family and my friends without harm to the Earth.”
There are many options for end-of-life practices with low environmental impact.
By Carla Tilghman
If you search online for “green death,” the first results might include a “Doctor Who” television episode; a “How to Train your Dragon” wiki fandom for the franchise; a heavy metal band; articles on the perils of 19th-century arsenic-based dyes; and a vodka-based cocktail. From these results, you might conclude that “green death” as a concept hasn’t entered common parlance enough to trump these other cultural touchstones. But thankfully, searching for “green funerals” or “green burials” instead reveals the opposite: there are many alternatives to traditional burial or cremation that are increasingly available. All these death-care practices share a focus on environmentally safe, humane, and loving ways to care for human and animal bodies, so you can choose the one that fits your last wishes.
Composting Funerals
Katrina Spade is the founder and CEO of Recompose, the first full-service human-composting funeral home, which began after almost a decade of planning, researching, fundraising, and working to change Washington state law on human composting.
White, honeycomb-like, hexagonal steel cylinders full of wood chips, alfalfa, and straw await human remains, all of which then undergo decomposition, or “natural organic reduction” (NOR). The first bodies were put into their cylinders on Dec. 20, 2020. Each body lays in its vessel for 30 days, with controlled levels of moisture and gases. Microbes and bacteria go to work decomposing all the organic materials. After 30 days, the decomposed material — now turned into soil — is placed in a curing bin to aerate, and is then screened to remove inorganics, such as fillings, pacemakers, and prosthetics. State regulations require the vessel and soil temperature to remain at 131 degrees Fahrenheit for 72 hours to kill any pathogens. Recompose and a third party each test the soil for residual arsenic, lead, and mercury. The client can choose people to keep the soil, as some do with cremated remains, or let their soil be donated to the Bells Mountain conservation forest in Washington.
Spade founded Recompose to offer a feasible, low-impact alternative to other forms of dealing with human remains. Traditional burials use too many toxic chemicals and can be expensive; cremations can produce too much carbon; and green burials are rarely available, especially to urban populations. (See “Death-Care Categories and Comparisons,” below.) Spade partnered with different groups to conduct feasibility studies, worked with a soil scientist, and addressed the legal obstacles for disposing of human remains, as well as fundraised the capital needed to get Recompose going.
Recompose charges $5,500, which covers everything from body pickup to paperwork and the NOR process. Cremation costs ($525 to $4,165) and traditional burial costs ($1,390 to $11,000) vary widely and aren’t always transparent. Recompose isn’t inexpensive, but the costs are fixed. Since opening Recompose, Spade has seen two other NOR competitors plan to open businesses in Washington.
The state of Washington prohibits people with tuberculosis or prion infections, such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, from undergoing NOR.
Infinity Burial Suit
Luke Perry, an actor known for his role in “Beverly Hills, 90210,” was buried in a mushroom suit, first developed by Jae Rhim Lee, founder of Coeio, a California-based green burial company. The suits, called Infinity Burial Suits, are made from organic cotton embedded with a material matrix of cultivated mushrooms that’s designed to accelerate decomposition. Coeio claims the suit “delivers nutrients from body to surrounding plant roots efficiently,” while filtering and decomposing bodily toxins and heavy metals. In Perry’s case, he was encased in the suit and then buried in a decomposing coffin. Coeio charges $1,500 for each human-sized suit — and less for pet-sized suits — and also promises to plant two trees for each suit that’s sold.
Reef Balls
Combining cremation with burial at sea, Eternal Reefs’ reef balls are designed not only to memorialize a loved one, but also to promote new growth of reefs and halt degradation of existing reefs. Eternal Reefs is part of the Reef Ball group of companies that’s been operating for more than a decade to create designed reef materials that replicate natural reef substrates. Specialized neutral-pH concrete is combined with cremated remains of an individual, and then placed inside a large, round, hollow form (the reef ball) with multiple openings that attract and support plant life and reef formation. The textured outer surface of each ball creates habitats for microorganisms that provide sustenance for both reef corals and fish.
Eternal Reefs invites family members to participate in as much or as little of the process as they want, including mixing the concrete and attending the reef ball placement. Upward of 2,000 Environmental Protection Agency-approved artificial reefs have been placed off the coasts of Florida, Maryland, New Jersey, North and South Carolina, and Texas.
Pricing depends on the size of the balls, which range from 2 feet high by 3 feet wide (weighing 550 to 700 pounds), to 4 feet high by 5½ feet wide (3,800 to 4,000 pounds). You can spend between $4,000 and $7,500 on a ball and service, which includes the price of choosing the Eternal Reef, family participation, bronze plaque, transportation to the reef site, and GPS survey coordinates of the specific longitude and latitude of your loved one.
Conservation Burials
If you’ve spent much of your time enjoying conserved land, you may decide to choose a natural burial on lands protected by recognized conservation land trusts. Conserved lands have partnered with groups to create sustainably managed cemeteries where human and pet remains are part of the ecosystem. Such management prioritizes restoration of natural resources and protection of the land’s ecological integrity.
Conservation burials are simple interments without a coffin or preservatives. Bodies are wrapped in biodegradable sheets (most often made of cotton), buried in unmarked sites on conservation lands, and allowed to decompose. Family members can visit the site through provided GPS coordinates. Several different types of natural decomposition burials are available nationwide.
What distinguishes conservation burials from other green burials is that the land is protected through a land trust or conservation group, and is actively managed with defined conservation goals. Conservation cemeteries are owned separately from the land trust, but work with them to achieve the trust’s stewardship goals.
Aquamation
Also known as “alkaline hydrolysis,” aquamation uses water flow, electric heat, and 5 percent alkalinity to break down organic matter. The process requires less biofuel than cremation, and it doesn’t produce emissions. Aquamation takes 6 to 8 hours at 300 degrees, or 18 to 20 hours at 200 degrees. In contrast, flame cremation takes 1 to 3 hours at 1,600 to 1,800 degrees.
After the body has been processed, the sterile process water is recycled, and the bioliquidator (the machine that processes the body) rinses the remains, which consist of inorganic materials and bone minerals. The minerals and bones are processed into a fine powder and placed in an urn for the family.
Bio-Response Solutions is one company that offers aquamation services for human remains, and it also sells bioliquidator machines for processing animal remains to livestock and farm operations.
Aquamation is a process that’s widely available in the United States, Canada, Costa Rica, Mexico, and South Africa for humans. For pets, the process is even more broadly available worldwide. In the U.S. and Canada, only a few states and provinces don’t have any human aquamation legislation in the pipeline.
While the pricing of aquamation varies from place to place, it’s generally comparable to cremation, and much less expensive than traditional burial.
Natural burials and funeral practices are designed to offer many different death-care options to individuals, but they all focus on reducing the use of toxic chemicals, reducing dependence on biofuels, and promoting land (and sea) conservation.
Death-Care Categories and Comparisons
Natural burial, also known as “green burial,” is a form of death care where the deceased’s body is buried in the ground in a way that allows for decomposition and natural recycling. An alternative to conventional Western forms of burial and funerary traditions, natural burial avoids embalming chemicals and nonbiodegradable materials. This market is growing, and with it, the number of natural death-care options a person has. Here’s an overview of several different death-care categories, comparing their general expenses and highlighted environmental impacts.Traditional funeral. Costs, ranging from about $7,000 to $12,000, typically include embalming and other preparation, viewing and burial, transportation, and casket. Embalming fluid can contain formaldehyde, a toxic chemical that can leak into the soil and damage the surrounding environment. Chemicals used in the construction of nonbiodegradable caskets can also leak into and damage soil and waterways.
Flame cremation
A less expensive conventional funeral practice, flame cremation costs range from the hundreds to the thousands of dollars, depending on how it’s done and how many additional services are included (such as a memorial or service). Flame cremation can rely on fossil fuels for energy, and harmful air pollutants can be released during the cremation process. However, flame cremation can have a smaller environmental footprint than a traditional burial.
Human composting
A natural alternative to traditional funeral practices, human composting is not a green burial, but a form of funeral care where bodies are “recomposed” into soil amendment and returned to the land. It performs significantly better than traditional burials and cremation in its environmental impact — notably, the carbon sequestration that happens during the entire process. This is a growing field in the United States, and one that relies on states allowing for human composting. The Seattle-based business Recompose has a fixed price for human composting of $5,500.
Green burial
This is perhaps the widest category for natural death-care options, which includes any form of burial that doesn’t introduce harmful chemicals into the environment and allows for natural body decomposition. The environmental impact is less than traditional burials; however, depending on accessibility to green burial spaces, the process of planning and executing a green burial may rack up your carbon footprint. Costs vary depending on the process; generally speaking, it’s the same or less than a traditional burial.
Reef burial
Burials in ocean reefs can be classified as a form of green burial. Eternal Reefs is one example, where cremated remains are mixed into a concrete reef that’s placed into the ocean. Costs vary from around $4,000 to $7,500, which includes most elements of reef ball creation and placement. This process is only available in certain states in the U.S. Eternal Reefs doesn’t include cremation services, which must be organized in advance through another company.
Aquamation (alkaline hydrolysis)
Access to alkaline hydrolysis for human remains is growing, as is its popularity. Aquamation, a company that offers this service, claims that this process has no direct greenhouse gas emissions, involves no burning of fossil fuels, and saves 90 percent more energy when compared with flame cremation. The price is comparable to flame cremation. Not every U.S. state has approved aquamation.
Resources
Green Burial Council, www.GreenBurialCouncil.org
The Order of the Good Death, www.OrderOfTheGoodDeath.com
Popular Youtube channel, Ask A Mortician, went behind the scenes to find out how one company is turning corpses into compost
By Emily Sleight
It’s a well-known fact that conventional burials and cremation can have high environmental costs.
‘Green burials’, which is where the body is put directly into the soil with just a shroud, could be seen as the ideal solution.
But with land at a premium in highly populated areas, green burial cemeteries aren’t always the first choice and that’s where ‘human composting’ comes in.
In her YouTube video, Caitlin Doughty (also known as Ask A Mortician) discusses the process, which is a practice many farmers have been doing with livestock for decades.
In 2015, the first donor bodies were composted in prototype studies at the department of forensic anthropology at Western Carolina University.
Now, the process is a lot more established. Caitlin’s friend, Kristina, is the founder of Recompose – a public-benefit corporation offering a natural alternative to burials. It is where Caitlin volunteers to explain what happens during composting.
In the video, Ask A Mortician places herself in a ‘vessel’ where she is covered with greenery with her favourite music playing in the background.
It is explained that families often bring clippings from their own garden, and are fascinated by the process itself, likening it to a ‘melding of science and spirituality’.
The composting ‘ritual’ involves laying wood chips and plants on top of the body with the belief that the body is ‘taking a new place in the carbon cycle.’
Next, the body is loaded into the vessels where microbes break it down in about a month.
When talking about the vessels themselves, Caitlin describes them as looking “kind of like a Japanese capsule hotel.”
She added: ”You’re actually probably pretty warm and cosy, comfortable, and with plenty of air.
“We have these microbes on us right now, but the only thing that makes them work on your body is if you’re dead.”
In a nutshell, the body is covered with wood chips and straw for 30 days to really get the microbes working, and eventually, you become soil.
Don’t worry though, if there are still a few bones after the 30 day period, they will be placed into a cremator.
The soil is then allowed to cure before it can be used in gardens, forests or conservation lands.
Of course, the soil is tested to ensure it meets the requirements, and families can take some of the soil home and donate the rest if they’d prefer.
And if you’re wondering how much an average person makes of soil, it’s around two wheelbarrows worth.
In the video, Caitlin even visits a compost heap of 28 people. The impressive mound was eventually donated to Bells Mountain conservation forest.
Washington has recently become the first US state to legalise human composting and UK funeral directors are also seeing a surge in requests for green burials and sustainable alternatives to burial and cremation.
The way humans live impacts the world. So does the way they die.
It isn’t death itself that creates an ecological nightmare, but rather the resource-intensive processes we’ve devised for dealing with the dead. On top of all the land that’s set aside for graveyards, building caskets requires around 30 million board feet of wood and 90,000 tons of steel each year (that’s more steel than you’ll find in the Golden Gate Bridge). Grave vaults guzzle up 1.6 million tons of concrete annually. And 800,000 gallons of toxic chemicals like formaldehyde go into embalming — chemicals that often wind up seeping into the ground. (Oh, and all these stats are for the U.S. alone.)
Cremation, which has edged out burial as the most popular option in the U.S., requires vast amounts of energy to maintain the 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit needed to incinerate a corpse, which can take two hours or more. In the U.S., the process releases about 250,000 tons of CO₂ into the atmosphere annually — the equivalent of burning more than 30 million gallons of gasoline — and a significant amount of mercury from dental fillings.
By now you may be thinking, “There’s got to be a better way.” There is.
We already have several eco-friendlier ways of dealing with the dead, and more than 50 percent of Americans are considering them. These methods can be as simple as wrapping bodies in cloth and lowering them into the ground to decompose, or as cutting-edge as human composting and mushroom suits. There are also culture-specific traditions like the Tibetan sky burial, in which the dead are dismembered and left on mountaintops to be feasted upon by vultures.
In her short story The Tree in the Back Yard, a finalist in Fix’s Imagine 2200 climate-fiction contest, author Michelle Yoon envisions a future in which green burial practices have become commonplace. In the opening scene, the main character, Mariska, chooses a tree that her father’s remains will nourish via a receptacle called an Eternity Pod. Later, when she goes to visit his final resting place, Mariska sees “Trees of all types, all ages. Trees as far as her eyes could see,” each one marking a natural burial site.
How close are we to the future Yoon imagines?
The modern green burial movement
Generally speaking, a green burial is one that encourages the natural process of decomposition. That means no embalming, fancy caskets, or headstones. In the most straightforward application, remains are placed in a simple box or cloth, and interred at a depth of about 3½ feet — roughly half the proverbial 6 feet under — where there’s more microbial activity in the soil.
The modern movement emerged about 30 years ago as some sought to reclaim the intimacy and filial responsibility that is lost when a third party takes ownership of the dead, says Hannah Rumble, a social anthropologist at the University of Bath’s Centre for Death and Society in England. “It was almost kind of a re-enchantment — this idea that our dead were a fertile source for new life, if we put them in sensitive ways back in the environment,” she says. “Rather than seeing a corpse as yucky and icky and something that needs to be sanitized and hidden away, actually the corpse, in its very decomposition, could be quite useful.”
Much like other eco-conscious movements — local food, right-to-repair, and living off the grid, for example — green burial, at its heart, is about reclaiming and re-familiarizing ourselves with a process. In this case, death.
In some cultures, elements of these practices are the norm already. Traditional Jewish burial involves family members washing and preparing the body, dressing it in a shroud, and burying it in a simple pine coffin, or no coffin at all. Although this practice is based on ancient Jewish law, it aligns with much of the green burial ethos. “It emphasizes simplicity, equality in death, and return of the body to the earth,” says Rabbi Seth Goldstein.
Muslim tradition similarly involves ritual bathing of a corpse, wrapping it in a cloth, and burying it without a casket, facing Mecca. In both customs, the funeral happens as quickly as possible after the person has died — which respects religious teachings about honoring the dead but also makes sense biologically. Without embalming or other forms of preservation, bodies must be interred ASAP, for obvious reasons.
Much like other eco-conscious movements, green burial is about reclaiming and re-familiarizing ourselves with a process. In this case, death.
Although straightforward burial can be made more sustainable, an increasing number of alternative methods that promise to make death not only sustainable but beneficial to the earth have captured the imaginations of entrepreneurs and designers — and some have become legit options. Human composting (or, as proponents prefer, “natural organic reduction”) made headlines earlier this year when Recompose, the first fully operational human composting facility, opened its doors in Kent, Washington. Colorado legalized the process this year, and Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, New York, Oregon, and Vermont are considering it.
Then there’s the mushroom suit, which actor Luke Perry was famously buried in. The sleek, black “infinity burial suit” is made of organic cotton and specially cultivated fungi, which the company claims help detoxify the corpse and deliver its nutrients to the soil.
What’s shown in The Tree in the Back Yard is a form of tree burial — the burial of human remains (cremated or otherwise) in a biodegradable “pod,” from which a tree will grow, letting the remains nourish its roots. Italian company Capsula Mundi (or “the world’s capsule”) has designed egg-shaped urns intended to feed saplings planted above them. So far, the only product it has on the market is an urn for ashes, but the company intends to pilot a larger pod that could hold a human body.
Legal and cultural barriers, and the future
The largest obstacle to something like Yoon’s vision of a full graveyard of trees growing from burial pods is not the technology, but the stigmas and laws it needs to overcome.
Death is a deeply emotional, ritualistic affair in most parts of the world, and customs (or outright rules) around dealing with the dead can be stringent. “Unless you’ve got a country whose population follows one particular cultural or religious tradition, I think it’s kind of impossible to say that you’ll have a wholly burial culture or a wholly cremation culture in a country,” says Rumble. Some religions necessitate cremation, like Hinduism, while other teachings support burial in specific ways. According to Rumble, that means there will always be a need for multiple options.
But that doesn’t mean newfangled approaches like tree burial and human composting can’t be compatible with religious teaching and rituals. For Goldstein, who lives and practices in Washington, human composting has become a real option for members of his community. And although it isn’t traditional, Goldstein finds that the practice can uphold Jewish teachings and values and shouldn’t necessarily be dismissed as non-Jewish.
“I can’t declare pork to be kosher all of a sudden,” he says. “But other things have more fluidity, in terms of the intersection between spiritual values and tradition and new technologies.” Goldstein puts the onus on himself and other religious leaders to find opportunities to make meaning out of these new approaches, rather than saying no to what people of faith want for themselves or their loved ones. “Sometimes people ask me, ‘Is this OK?’ And I think that really what they’re asking is, ‘How do we make this Jewish?’”
As for simpler green burials replacing the chemical- and resource-intensive methods, other barriers must be overcome. In the Western world, the sanitized approach to handling dead bodies doesn’t just reflect our culture — it has also made its way into our laws. Some states require embalming or refrigeration of bodies that have been dead for more than 24 hours. If families haven’t planned ahead, that doesn’t leave much time to make arrangements at a natural burial ground.
“Some jurisdictions [also] mandate the use of concrete liners,” Goldstein says, which wouldn’t traditionally be used in Jewish burial and aren’t compatible with the green approach, either. In 2008, a county in Georgia passed an ordinance requiring leak-proof containers for corpses, due to a complaint about a proposed green burial site. Most states allow home burial on private property, but some also require special permits to do so and a handful of states mandate that a funeral director be on hand.
Even if it’s not law, each cemetery sets its own policies and requirements. According to the Green Burial Council, only 335 cemeteries across the U.S. and Canada offer green or conservation burial options (there are more than 144,000 total cemeteries in the U.S.). A majority of those are hybrid cemeteries, and some are also Jewish or otherwise affiliated.
But the list has been steadily growing. In 2018, 54 percent of Americans said they were considering a green burial, and 72 percent of cemeteries reported increased demand for eco-friendly options. There are all kinds of reasons for the shift, beyond the desire to live (er, die) more lightly on the planet. Natural burial options may be cheaper than ones involving ornate caskets, concrete vaults, and granite headstones. When a grave site is incorporated into the landscape, there’s no need to maintain or decorate it, which removes the fear of placing a burden on family members — or becoming the sad spectacle of an unloved grave.
And the desire to return to the earth, which has echoes in many religious teachings, appeals to many on a spiritual level. “Whether through the lenses of personal faith or secular society or science, we all recognize that circular notion of life and death,” Rumble says. Natural burial speaks directly to that, whether it’s in a simple cotton shroud or a mushroom suit. “The fact that, perhaps, you exist in some other form because your body’s gone back to the soil, that offers great solace to people,” she says.
And in fact, that very mindset shift may turn out to be more important than the emissions saved or the trees planted. As various forms of green burial begin to take root, they reinforce the idea that we humans are part of the natural world, and we have a responsibility to nurture it — in life as well as in death.
But you can choose what happens to your body after your life.
There are many options for what happens to your body after your death. But there’s only one real way to give it a long afterlife.
By Adam Larson
Gardeners can be very picky about the kind of compost they use, but this year Washington-based business Recompose has begun making it from a new ingredient: human remains. Intended as an eco-friendly funeral alternative, interested parties should perhaps be forewarned: It takes a couple of months to go from corpse to compost.
But (legally) composting yourself or a recently departed loved one is by no means the only unusual alternative to traditional burial or cremation.
You — or someone’s remains for which you are legally responsible — can now be buried in a suit made of cotton and mushroom spores, intended to make a person’s body into fungus food. (The process also claims to clean heavy metals from the deceased’s remains before they seep into the soil.)
The deeper question you might want to ask may be why we care what happens to our dead bodies at all.
If you’d prefer your earthly remains to stay closer to your loved ones (or they would prefer to keep your remains close), your post-cremation ashes can be made into a diamond and worn as jewelry or transformed into a glass paperweight for a bizarre cubicle talking piece.
Conversely, if you’d rather get away from Earth altogether, you could have your ashes shot into space, where they would then orbit the Earth before disintegrating upon future re-entry. If you’d like to really get away, your ashes could be shot out of orbit and into deep space. That is what was done with the remains of Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto; his remains came within 8,000 miles of the dwarf planet and are currently over 4 billion miles from Earth.
After hearing the many options of what to do with your body after you’re done using it, you might have some questions. But the deeper question you might want to ask may be why we care what happens to our dead bodies at all.
Part of the issue is that many religions believe what happens to our remains is important. Hindus cremate their dead because they believe their souls will only leave their bodies if forced to leave. Zoroastrians believe that dead bodies are impure and must be disposed of properly. Ancient Egyptians believed their bodies needed to be preserved because they were the vessels that contained their spirits.
If you actually want to make a difference after you’re gone, there are better choices.
But even people who don’t hold beliefs about the importance of the physical body in the afterlife still follow funeral customs. Around the world, most people (even those without a belief in an afterlife) would be weirded out by the prospect of the body of a loved one (or their own body) being unceremoniously tossed into a landfill, which is strange when you think about it. After all, it’s not as if dead people need their bodies for anything: They’re dead.
Clearly, another part of the human adherence to funeral rituals across time and cultures has to do with a desire to be remembered after we are gone and the idea that we now express as some version of “funerals are for the living.” A gravesite can help keep the memory of the deceased alive for their remaining loved ones, give mourners a specific place to commemorate the dead and make them feel closer to the deceased. But if you really think about it absent our cultural norms, even this is a bit odd, because you aren’t actually closer to the person who died at a gravesite.
You’re just closer to their corpse or ashes, and regardless of your personal belief system, you probably actually consider the intangibles of a person — whether you want to call that their heart or their soul or their mind — the essence of what makes them who they are, rather than their physical body.
Yet while we know that, we still have difficulty separating the idea of the mind from the body. Perhaps that’s because we can’t communicate with other humans without interacting with a physical body to some degree. Disrespecting a person’s remains, no matter how little they “are” the person anymore, still feels like disrespecting the person.
Part of the human adherence to funeral rituals across time and cultures has to do with a desire to be remembered after we are gone
So why, then, do some people want their bodies to become compost, coral reefs or mushroom food? A major motivator seems to be concern for the environment. The embalming fluid used to keep remains presentable for typical American funerals is good at preserving dead things but can also make other things die (if, for instance, it’s ingested by underground organisms — though U.S. regulations mandate that caskets be sealed to avoid things inside from leaking outside).
And while cemeteries only cover a tiny fraction of the Earth’s surface, they are often located in cities, where land can be in short supply, and severe water events like floods can cause serious issues for the living, who generally prefer that caskets (and the bodies inside them) stay buried.
After hearing the many options of what to do with your body after you’re done using it, you might have some questions.
So becoming compost — or something similar — seemingly lets your body do some good after you’re gone. The opportunity to help others is the ethos behind the similar, but much older, practice of Tibetan sky burials (though, in a sky burial your body provides sustenance for vultures instead of hydrangeas).
But if you actually want to make a difference after you’re gone, there are better choices than turning your body into compost or vulture food. You can make compost out of human remains or the leftovers you forgot at the back of the refrigerator, but only one of those can save lives when used in a different way.
While organ donation generally still leaves people with the option for burial, cremation or composting, there’s another option: donating your remains entirely to science. Donated bodies are used to train the next generation of doctors in medical schools, provide insight into human variation and even reveal how our bodies naturally decay — to help forensic anthropologists identify murder victims and catch their killers. Like organ donation, donating a body to science can save lives.
You might not get the chance to save the lives of others while you’re alive. But you do have the chance to make a simple decision while you’re still with us that can help others live longer after you’re gone.
Environmentally friendly treatment of a body after it dies is garnering more interest in Maine these days. There are some passionate advocates for new, less environmentally harmful practices, but there are political, cultural and logistical challenges that could stand in the way of widespread change in the funeral industry.
Across the country, public health policies are wary about practices such as green burials and liquid cremation.
Caitlyn Hauke of New Hampshire is the vice president and board member of the Green Burial Council, a California-based advocacy group for more sustainable death practices. She said that many of the policies that make green burials and other sustainable methods of final disposition more difficult are the result of an outdated or misinformed understanding of death.
“I serve on the board of cemetery trustees for [Lebanon, New Hampshire], and some of the hang ups in trying to change municipal bylaws to allow green burial are these misconceptions that dead bodies spread disease, there’s going to be contamination of the ground and water and things that aren’t true,” Hauke said. “It’s hard to convince people that are set in their ways [that these things aren’t true].”
As an added challenge, Maine crematoriums are required to be located in a cemetery, according to Jim Fernald, spokesperson for the Maine Funeral Directors Association and funeral director of Brookings-Smith in Bangor. Crematoriums are also subject to restrictions in terms of size and licensing.
Some want to see that change though, allowing for more flexibility in how a body is handled after death. There is currently a bill before the Maine state legislature to consider reforming the liquid cremation rules to allow them to happen off-site of a cemetery.
Policy is one thing, but there is also the more challenging issue of shifting culture — specifically how people think — to look at death differently.
“Americans tend to avoid talking about death, you know,” said Chuck Lakin, a volunteer with the Funeral Consumers Alliance of Maine. “When they do, they get a lot of misinformation or they’ve heard things and they keep passing them around.”
Lakin runs a website called Last Things that provides information about what is and isn’t legal and safe when it comes to funeral options in Maine.
Still, it can be difficult to spread the word when death is such a taboo topic. Katie Riposta is the funeral director at Direct Cremation of Maine in Belfast, which conducts liquid cremations. She sees continued challenges with spreading the word about the various options available for final disposition.
“It’s hard to advertise because you have to find a professional and tacit way of letting people know there’s new information without seeming sales-y,” Riposta said. “We think the process is a very nice process for end of life final disposition, but some people don’t like to talk about that in advance. I would say the consumer knowledge in and around Maine is limited, [but] people are certainly becoming more educated.”
Even if consumers are aware of the sustainable options, these methods for final disposition require a significant amount of advance planning and advocating for your specific after-death wishes — much more so than a conventional funeral. If there is a sudden death and people don’t have the chance to plan a sustainable burial, their families will likely default to a more conventional, less sustainable option.
“When someone dies suddenly, people just stop thinking. They really need the help of professionals to guide them through,” Fernald said. “Making the green the default would be a much larger culture shift.”
Green death options in Maine are still very limited. Currently, there are only two designated green cemeteries in the state of Maine: Rainbow’s End Natural Cemetery in Orrington and Cedar Brook Burial Ground in Limington. Other cemeteries have designated areas for green burials.
Meanwhile, Direct Cremation of Maine is the only provider of liquid cremation for human remains, though policy shifts might open the door for more to open in the future.
“Green cremation is definitely an interesting process,” Riposta said. “We’ll see in the future how crematories are regulated as a whole and see where it goes from there.”
Funeral industry professionals are divided as to whether the green funeral movement will continue to grow in Maine. Fernald thinks that it will remain niche.
“Death and ritual is so individual based on previous death experiences and how you’re raised,” Fernald said. “When people are in an emotional part of their life, they go to things that are natural to them. If they were always raised to live off the land and all that, I would think [green burial] would be what they gravitate to during a time of loss.”
Awareness may be the most challenging element of the movement towards more sustainable funeral practices, but Hauke said that “the more people hear about it, the more interested they become.”
“The movement is growing thanks in part to the increased attention to the death positive movement that this is sort of opening doors to conversations about death that Americans have shied away from,” Hauke said.