What is a Green Burial?
The goal of a green, or natural, burial is to return the body to the earth in a manner that does not inhibit decomposition and allows the body to recycle naturally. It is intended as an environmentally sustainable alternative to existing funeral practices.
Green burials are much more common in the UK, Europe and Canada. The idea started in the UK in 1993. Since then the concept has spread across the globe.
What is common with green burial?
- No embalming
- Use a natural casket (or shroud)
- No vault
- Burial is in a natural area with native trees, shrubs and flowers, with no man-made additions such as an sprinkler system
- Burial is more shallow than a traditional funeral to facilitate decomposition
- Grave markers that do not intrude on the landscape
- As in all cemeteries, a record is still kept of exact location of each burial (sometimes using global positioning coordinates)
- In Utah only a few commercial cemeteries allow Green Burial. However if you want to dig the grave yourself or avoid a vault, a rural cemetery may allow you to. For a list: http://history.utah.gov/research_and_collections/cemeteries/index.html
Environmental Issues with Conventional Burial
Each year, over 22,000 cemeteries across the United States bury approximately:
- 30 million board feet of hardwoods (in caskets)
- 90,000 tons of steel (in caskets)
- 14,000 tons of steel (in vaults)
- 2,700 tons of copper and bronze (in caskets)
- 1,600,000 tons of reinforced concrete (in vaults)
- 825,000 US gallons of embalming fluid (include mostly formaldehyde)
Other Links about Green Burials
- Green Burials
- Email FCAofUtah@gmail.com for our City Cemetery Survey of prices and rules
- Green Burial Council
- The Centre for Natural Burial
- Funeral Consumers Alliance
