When I trained at the cemetery to be a family service counselor, we were taught a variety of sales technique.  One of them was how to sell niches for cremation.  We were instructed to emphasize that having a place such as a niche was a better place to hold a memory than the mantle or scattering to the wind. Cremation is the final disposition of a body and you need not by law bury the cremains. Cremation affords a family a many different ways to create a place of memory. You can scatter on your own land, be placed in bullets, pressed into a favourite record album or made into a jewel, just to name a few.  Cremation attracts people who do not want a lot of falderal in their funeral planning. The industry, knowing this, would like very much to be part of your decision-making and sell you a niche or a place in the lawn for burial.

I treasure the time I spend visiting graves.  When I was in High School, I went to Chaucer’s grave in Westminster Abby.  I remember standing there filled with awe and admiration.  I carry that memory always.  Standing by a grave is a powerful feeling at times be it your grandparents or a great poet.  Far be it from me to tell folks not to have a place in a cemetery or burial ground for those they love.  The place of memory is not my issue.  I take issue with making people think that a place of memory belongs to the corporate death care industry.

We have options for making a place of memory.  Cremains can always be scattered or buried on your own property rural or otherwise without having to make a notation on the deed. You can dedicate a place on your own property for full body burial through following your state’s laws. Full body burial might be easier in a rural setting, but it can be done. Always make sure you know and follow the laws in your state.  In ancient times, Christian communities formed around burial societies.  Old churches still have burial ground attached for members of the church.  I do not see why we cannot have more church run cemeteries or cemeteries associated with other groups.  Why don’t environmental groups set aside places for their members who wish to have a green burial?  Why don’t urban groups create burial coops?  I know cemeteries are tough to run, but we have options if we only look. We have options if only we take to time to create them for those around us.  We never have options if we take the industry representatives at their word.  We need to know our rights.  Modest burial grounds need not be moneymakers.  The municipal cemetery down the street from where I live sells plots for $250 – a far cry from the $18000+ in corporate run cemeteries.   

Many of us do not want to end up in a corporate run cemetery.  We need to face the fact that none of us have yet gotten out of this life alive, and research and plan our own deaths.  The time to make decisions is not at the time of someone’s death where grief can make the process more difficult, but when we calmly and logically look at what we and our family wants for a funeral and burial plan.  If we want to have the kind of funeral and burial we want, we need to start now looking at local resources. We might have to create the place of memory for our body at the end of our time on earth.  I do not recommend ever purchasing a plot for burial long before the time that it will be needed.  Once you purchase a right of burial, the cemetery will not likely return your purchase once the time for cooling off has past.  I do recommend setting money aside for the purpose of your final acts and let your money work for you, and not the cemetery’s corporation. 

The true place of memory will always reside in our hearts.  How we live our lives matters the most and remains with those who love and know us. Sometimes if we are lucky, our lives will be remembered from generation to generation. Having a place to visit at a graveside is useful for many.  Any place that reminds us of someone who has died becomes a place of memory. We need not pay a corporation for a place of memory.

I have always loved nature.  I have fond memories spending long hours with the neighborhood children running and playing in the woods.  I have always felt a strong love of the woods.  The majesty of the trees and the delicate undergrowth has always made me feel at home and at peace.  As children, my sister and I were taught to respect nature in life and in death.  We were taught that we were stewards of the earth and if we did not use it properly we would lose it. We discussed cremation as the best way to return the body back to nature.  We did not realize at the time that cremation was not so green. I came to the notion of green burial very naturally.  What is green burial?  The simplest definition is - burial with a natural body, in an eco-friendly container (shroud or coffin) no vault.  This definition is simple, but does not give the depth to what green burial is about. 

First, green burial advocates for the use of resources in a proper way.  This means keeping the earth free from poisons of conventional embalming fluids, adhesives and other material used in conventional burial.  Green burial is also about keeping our natural resources for future generations by not putting them in the ground.  Let us look at burial vaults. Why do we need vaults and why do we need vaults lined in precious metals?  We don’t. The conventional industry tells us that vaults keep the ground level in cemeteries.  If buried properly in a shrouded or in an eco-friendly coffin and the ground mounded up, the grave should be just fine.  

Green burial also allows us to take up the traditions of the past, and move forward into the future in a gentle way.  We take up the simple, traditional, and loving process of our ancestors who bathed and dressed their loved ones at the time of death.  How much more simple it is to follow the greener and traditional path in burial than it is to follow the conventional means with their embalmed bodies, fancy caskets and vaults for us to keep our precious treasure in.  Our treasure lives in our hearts and in the stories we tell our children, not in the tombs of our loved ones. We need to be honest with ourselves, we are organic beings and at death we return back to the earth.

Finally, green burial is about preserving the land for generations to come.  In a conservation burial, the cemetery lies juxtaposed to a certified conservation land.  Other certified green burials are not situated in this way, but are no less dedicated to preserving the land.  They take the stand that in this place, we take care of our loved ones and preserve this land, natural and free for the generations to come.  It’s kind of like squatting rights.  As long as it is a cemetery, the land remains free from development.  In death, we can preserve the land one person and one patch of land at a time.  

Last week I stood under the canopy of an oak savanna and felt the timelessness of the sounds and wind around me.  Here, I thought I would love to remain until the end of time.  Here, I would love to be buried beneath these strong boughs and here, I would love to nurture this ancient and timeless place.  Alas, there are no such places yet in Illinois where people can be buried on conservation land.   With time and effort, we hope this will change.

One of my favourite posts this summer has been Your Body Is Not Disgusting. I based my statements on a Pan American Health Organization article, which stated that for the most part, our bodies after death no longer are able to spread disease and that the living are more of the culprit in spreading disease.  We have seen, however, in the last month the devastation the Ebola has left in West Africa.  Here the normal death rituals must be abandoned if the disease is to end.  Ebola is one of the rare diseases that can spread to others even after death.  Ebola spreads through direct contact with the body and bodily fluids, where pathogens live after the death of the person for some time.

The World Health Organization (WHO) states that when a person with Ebola dies, the body must be cleaned with bleach, and placed in two body bags.  The body is then taken to a grave, and buried approximately six feet under.  No family accompanies the body, and often times the family has no idea where the body has been buried.  The vehicle is also cleaned with bleach.

Let us look at the funeral and burial practices of West Africa to see why this has caused such friction between the people and the medical world that serves them. West African burial rites are not too far removed from many of our own practices, or practices of our grandparents or great grandparents.  The body is cleaned and dressed.  People morn and dance.  At last the mourners gather for the final kiss before the burial, which takes place near the home so that the soul of the one who has died may not be lonely.  My own community has a final kiss.  We too mourn.   I remember dancing in my grandfather’s home following his funeral. Our cultural norms here stem from the wide variety of cultures that compose our own individual families.  We are free to pick and choose which rites speak to us and apply them to our rites of transition.  Death is one of those transitions.  West Africa may not have the flexibility in culture to choose different rites.  These rites are long lived in the fabric of that society.  We may not fully understand since we freely choose how we stage our weddings and funerals.

When people go into the hospital and do not come out; their body taken and buried somewhere the family does not know it gives rise to mistrust and avoidance of medical help.  Then fear helps spread the disease. I do not pretend to know how this can be fixed.  For those facing Ebola, they might not have a mechanism in their culture to easily changed or modify tradition to fix the crisis I hope better communication between the medical world and the people it serves will help create an atmosphere where people will seek help and when death comes, a new or modified form of mourning might take place.

There are a few others of these - bloodborne gastrointestinal respiratory- diseases that might spread disease following death. They require universal precautions and the washing of hands to keep the person handling the bodies from direct contact with bodily fluids.   For the most part, after some time has lapsed and the body has been washed, these bodies do not pose a threat. Others like Creutzfeldt–Jakob Disease pose a risk for the funeral director who opens the body and drain the blood in the embalming procedure.  I recommend reading the Pan American Heath Organization’s article: Infectious disease risks from dead bodies following natural disasters.  I found it very interesting and provides a thorough explanation of death and disease.

In General, if you leave the body intact and do not embalm the body, the body once cleaned should not cause trouble unless you have Ebola.  Leaving our bodies intact is the best way to keep our environment healthy.  In test of ground water around cemeteries, the water shows evidence of decay, but it does not spread far and is due mostly to products used in the death care industry (coffins and embalming fluid).  Our bodies are not usually disgusting, but once in awhile there comes a disease like Ebola which throws that idea out the window, and we must take steps to make sure the bodies are taken care of in a particular manner. 

To begin our quest, we need to begin in the eighteenth and nineteenth century when people were looking to the past to create the future of their nations.  One need only take a walk through Washington DC to see what I am saying is true.  DC is filled with classical temples. At the turn of the eighteenth century, Napoleon conquered Egypt where he not only took treasure, but also had a group of men who mapped the Valley of the Kings and the discovered of the Temple of Luxor.  If any of you have been to Paris, you have seen the Obelisk, which originally stood at the entrance of the Temple of Luxor. These Napoleon experts published their finding and images made there way throughout the western world, and mark the first wave of Egyptian craze.  Other men would follow in their footsteps and archeology would be born.  The deep-seated desire to look back at our roots would cause nations to seek out their cultural roots.  Museums also were born from this desire.  People began to collect things from their cultural past and display them.  What began as small curios cabinets became treasure houses for nations.  We need only look to such museums as The Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC.  I could go on to discuss the impact of this craze on the cultures that were giving up their treasure, but that is a subject for another time and the reason I do not work in museums.

In this soup of nationalism and love of Egypt, we began embalming our dead.  I am not surprised that in the US Civil war, we romanticized embalming as a way of emulating the great Egyptian Kings and Queens.  At first, embalming could only be done for the very rich.  (A regular soldier’s monthly pay was $13 and embalming for him would be $25, where an officer would have to pay $50 whose pay was about $100+ depending on rank.) Probably the image that most imprinted our national psyche was the death of the beloved Abraham Lincoln. His body was embalmed and traveled many miles on the railway making stops for people to pay their last respects to the fallen leader.  I believe our society began its journey idealizing embalming and vaults in this climate of love for things ancient and Egyptian, and our admiration of Lincoln.

In 1922, Howard Carter and George Herbert found King Tutankhamen’s tomb.  The find of a nearly intact tomb sparked an even greater Egyptian Craze.  In the US, the construction of the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Buildings, most dramatically demonstrate our love for all things Egyptian.  The Chrysler Burling with its stylized papyrus leaves and a year later the streamlined form of an Egyptian temple in the Empire State Building.  The Egyptian craze gives birth to art deco. 

The 1920s also marks the when most Americans began to be embalmed and funeral homes became the place of private homes were visitations took place.  We were becoming an urbanized society and no longer had front parlors to receive visitors wanting to pay their respects and offer condolences.  It’s so easy to see our society who was looking backward to move forward, who wanted to emulate kings and queens of the past and our own fallen leader.  Now, in the midst of the Egyptian craze, we wanted to be just like the King and Queens of old.

So here we are today, with acres of cemetery plots filled with kings and queens under the earth, in some cases above the earth like the Pharaohs of old. Do we really think we are ancient kings and queen and that our bodies should be preserved forever?  Then again, that is so American.  We stand against such class differences.  If it’s good enough for the king, it’s good enough for Aunt Suzie.  I understand that.  I am an American after all.  What I wonder about is do we want to continue our conventional funeral practices as normative?  Do we really want to keep the bodies of our loved ones preserved forever?  Look at the mummies of Egypt in the nineteenth century.  They were not treated well, especially if they really weren’t really a king or queen. Some were turned to medicine, made into paint, dug up and unwrapped for scientific study or entertainment. I am sure I do not want to end up in a museum.   I am also sure I do not want to end up as paint or medicine.  Why do we want to keep our loved ones bodies sealed up under the earth so that in several hundred years or so their tombs might be open again by people who may or may not share our same sensibilities?  For me, I want to return to the earth from which I came.  I have no desire to have my body treated in death in any extravagant manner. Please, place me in a shroud, and return me to the earth.  If my body helps preserve land, and especially a forest, that would be even better.  I do not want to be a queen sealed in a tomb under the earth.  Please treat my body in death as a simple human being that I am in life.  I am not a queen. I am just a woman trying to do her best in this world. 

I was trained and worked in a cemetery run by one of the largest death care corporations.  We had a brief training on vaults.  Much of our training was brief because the purpose of a family service councilor is to sell.  We were told that vaults maintain the integrity of the grave, help keep the ground level for the cemetery and lined vaults kept out the elements (or nature) from reaching the casket. We sold all kinds of vaults from the simple to the high-end precious metal lined vaults.  To be quite fair, we were never trained to push the high-end vaults.  Our training also made it clear that vaults were not a legal requirement, but a requirement of the cemetery.

Let us look at this video demonstrating how tough the vault is.

My first comment about this video is about their scientific process.  We have no idea how long this vault remained buried before it was dug up again.  We have no idea if heavy equipment rode over this spot. Finally, the casket is empty.  We have no idea about the state of an occupied coffin buried for an unspecified amount of time.  I realize that they are selling vaults not coffins, but to be sure coffins and vaults are used together.   When I was a family service counselor, I became close to the grounds workers at the cemetery.  One member of the team who had been a grave digger for many, many years, told me that whenever he has been present at a disinterment, the vaults have always been cracked or otherwise breached.  Sometimes the breach was dramatic, other times, not so much.  Once interred, there is very little way of knowing the quality of the structure of a vault.  Some vaults are sturdier than others.  I do not mean to imply that vaults are designed to break or that all vaults do not stand up to the pressure.  What I am saying is no one really knows how tough any vault can be until you dig it up after use. 

Here is another video:

This one plays at the heartstrings.  As you know, I am all in favour of personalization of death rituals.  I find it odd that personalized vault that will spend most of its time underground, and that the only people who will be seeing it again will be those who would dig up the grave.  We are told in this video that a lined vault secures the casket and contents from water and insects.  It makes me wonder what it is we think we are doing when we bury our loved ones.  Do we really want to keep their bodies preserved for generations in hopes that one day an archeologist will dig them back up again? I think perhaps vaults are a hold over from the anti-theft devices developed for higher end burials in the 18th and 19th centuries when corpses were sometime dug up for scientists to study anatomy.  It’s not a pretty thought, but there you have it.  It’s not a huge leap from protecting bodies from body snatcher to protecting bodies from anything and everything. 

There are solutions for vaults in graves.  I suggest that vaults are not a necessity at all, providing steps are taken to prevent sunken graves. In green burial the grave is filled mounded with dirt on the graven so that once the settling of the grave takes place, the grave is not sunken.  A shrouded body creates less concern for grave settling than those using a biodegradable coffin because there is much less matter be broken down. In green certified burials, care is given to maintain the ground.  Green Burial does not mean haphazard burials without forethought.  To the contrary, certified green burial grounds undergo extensive planning and go through a strict process for certification.  Thought is given to preserving and restoring the land and in that maintaining the integrity of graves and the land in general.

Many of us in the Midwest live in areas without access to certified burial grounds, conventional cemeteries that offer a green option, or in states that require the hiring of a funeral director at the point of death.  Because of the situation we face, many of us have to make choices that are not perfect choices. Here are five simple hacks to make a funeral and burial greener.  At the end of the day, we all can only do our best.


Don’t Be Embalmed   That is easier said than done if you live in Indiana, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska, New Jersey, or New York.  Many funeral homes require embalming for public viewings, or wakes, or any kind of an open coffin. If you live in one of these states there might be a Death Doula close to you that will be able to direct you to a good funeral director.  If you do not live near a home funeral guide, I recommend you shop around at local funeral homes. If you live in the Chicagoland area, contact us and we can provide you with contacts. 

Some of us come from traditions that necessitate an open coffin for our religious rites.  Some of us come from cultural traditions where viewing the body is central to the grieving process.  Most funeral homes offer direct burial, but you should not have to settle for direct burial if it goes against your heart.   Any funeral director should be able to offer refrigeration. An open coffin with a natural body will not spread disease, most diseases die with the body. You still need to take proper care of the body after death, but this is not a difficult process. The point is, plan ahead of time.  Stand by what you know is right and what you know fits with what you need through the grieving process.  Feel free to contact Midwest Green Burial Society if you need any assistance with this.

Invert the Vault.  Many of us live in states where there are no certified green burial grounds.  You might find yourself wanting a green burial, but have no place to bury in a green site.  If you cannot find a cemetery that does not require a vault, or if you are pressed for time and are deep in grief, remember to ask that the vault be inverted.  The coffin or shroud will be in contact with the earth, and might be the most natural way you can bury your loved ones.  Many cemeteries will comply if you tell them that your loved one will not be embalmed and you want to make greener choices.

Low Impact Coffin or Shroud.  Shrouds least impact the environment at the time of burial.  You may need a board for extra support to help lower the body, but it is by far the simplest way to be buried.  There are a few on-line to choose from, but remember you can make a shroud from a qulit or blanket.  MGBS has a resource page with some low impact coffins and shrouds.  While we love the wicker and wool coffins, we look to the amount of jet fuel to takes to get here from Europe, and we feel strongly about shopping locally.

On-line Memorial. Remember not everyone can come to a memorial event or they live far away, making travel difficult, costly and use too much fossil fuel.  Create an online page for people to express their grief, and a way to share favourite stories.  We live far away from each other physically, but we can come together online to be a support to each other.

Use Locally Source Flowers.  Instead of using florists, who often use environmentally unfriendly practices get your flowers locally, even a home garden.  For an even greener choice, contact your local conservation district office and ask which indigenous flowers or decorative branches you could use.  In the winter, evergreens would be a beautiful choice. For a memory gift, consider making seed packets using seeds from Seed Savers Exchange or other local seed saving groups.   We use Seed Savers Exchange seeds for our seed pack/business card.  Use of these kinds of seeds promotes biodiversity.

Remember, whatever choices we made in the past were made because we thought we were being responsible. I suggest we do not beat ourselves up about the past and start today educating ourselves so that we can make better choices in the future. 

Juliann Salinas is our guest author this week.  Juliann is a Co-founder of the Midwest Green Burial Society and social justice advocate, holds a BA in Political Science from the University of Colorado at Boulder and an MBA from Ashford University with a specialization in Environmental Management.  Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (Paraguay 1994-1996)

A few weeks back I was sent another link for a time-sensitive fundraiser.  A former coworker’s son had died at 16 in a tragic swimming accident, and donations were being sought to help cover the burial and funerary expenses.  It was a sad reminder of the practical realities of death.

With the average cost of funeral services and internment at about $10,000, few families are able to absorb the expense of modern death, particularly sudden death, which has given rise to crowdfunding requests.  Some sites, including Graceful Goodbye and Funeral Fund, have been created specifically to cater to death care expenses.

I am an advocate of, and oft-contributor to, crowdfunding requests.  I feel that it is a medium that provides the average Jane or Joe the opportunity to invest in projects that express their passions and interests in a way that most middle-class investment opportunities rarely can. Getting in on the ground floor of a new restaurant, supporting a local art gallery exhibit or rock band recording, or helping launch a great small business idea used to be the realm of the rarified-air-breathing “qualified investors,” those with a cool million or so of “risk-able” money. For the rest of us who find it difficult to figure out if our 401k is sunk in to big oil or Monsanto, crowdfunding provides a straightforward exchange and often has the advantage of instant and long-term gratification – although, rarely, huge financial gains. Crowdfunding “returns on investment” are, usually, mostly intangible -such as gratitude and the not-entirely-vicarious thrill of seeing one’s supported project succeed.

Another, often unmentioned, aspect of crowdfunding is its ability to bring attention to causes, issues and concerns that are not being addressed by the status quo.  Whether its investing in the exploration of solar roadways, or helping out uninsured folks upon whom tragedy has fallen, crowdfunding “asks” can highlight the cracks in the system and attempts to weave a social safety net and support structures where the free enterprise system and government fail.

Which brings me to a fundamental question – should burials be considered a basic human right and, if so, how should they be financed? Clearly an honorable burial is valued by the military for veterans, for whom they are provided at no cost, but what about every other world citizen? With our identification technology and digital cataloguing/GPS capacity there is no excuse for a nameless “paupers grave” to be the sole option for those without funds, or desire, to support the conventional, environmentally-damaging funeral practices. Why doesn’t our society have a simple, yet dignified, no cost option for all?

I propose that such an opportunity could be created through targeted investments, for vetted non-profit land conservation groups, that are specifically earmarked for the development of natural and/or conservation burial grounds. Hundreds, if not thousands, of green jobs could be created, including local urban wood/reclaimed wood coffin makers, shroud manufacturers, “death midwives” or re-trained green funeral directors, site planners, land managers, and documentarians.

Death care is a $20.7B industry.  If even a tenth of that funding was made accessible to support the preservation of open space while providing a no cost burial option to all, hundreds of thousands of acres could be saved or restored, and tens of thousands of families could avoid sinking further into debt in the name of “honoring” their loved ones - instead focusing on their natural grieving process and life celebrations. That’s an investment I’d be willing to make.  Time to Indiegogo?