The final aspect of green burial is green cemeteries. Most people opt to be buried in a traditional cemetery, six feet in the ground, in a coffin encapsulated in a vault. Others opt to be cremated. While it may seem like you’re choosing the environmentally friendly option in that case, in reality, the energy used to cremate a body is the same as a 500 mile car trip. It also releases nearly 900 pounds of carbon dioxide into the air along with mercury vapor and other pollutants.

The phrase “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” still prevails for a reason. The most natural and environmentally friendly approach to what to do with a dead body is to bury it. The problem is, many states won’t just let you put Grandma under the apple tree in the backyard.

….or if they do, it requires a lot of preplanning.

This brings us to green cemeteries. Not only do they exist, as part of the research for this article, I actually visited one.

Again, the Green Burial Council has a rubric for rating cemeteries, but this one is easier to understand. A cemetery with a single leaf rating is a Hybrid Burial Ground (and I’m not talking about where you’d bury characters from The Vampire Diaries). Hybrid Burial Grounds are often a traditional cemetery that will allow you to bury a body without the use of a vault or any type of container. They will also permit the use of shrouds.

A two leaf rating is a Natural Burial Ground. It bans the use of any type of vault and will not allow any embalmed remains to be buried there. All burial materials must be made out of natural materials, including plants. It must also have an Integrated Pest Management in place and be maintained and operated in a way that keeps the grounds in sync with the natural ecosystem.

A three leaf rating is for Conservation Burial Grounds, which adhere to the same standards as the Natural Burial Grounds, but the land is legally protected as a conservation area and holds a deed restriction guaranteeing long term stewardship.

This is one area that isn’t necessarily any more budget friendly that a traditional burial. I’ve found spots in natural burial grounds can go for around $2,000 a plot. This is pretty much on par with a spot in a traditional cemetery (oddly enough, you can also buy a traditional plot eBay style at Grave Solutions). To me, this is understandable, since a green cemetery requires just as much upkeep – even more so, because to hold a 2-3 leaf Green Burial Council rating, you have to put a way a certain amount of money per plot sold to ensure the long term stewardship of the area.

However, you would save money on a gravestone. You’ll want to check with the owner of the cemetery when inquiring about a plot about what is allowed as headstones. In some stricter cemeteries, no markers are allowed or only the planting of certain plants (to read about a green burial gone wrong, check out this story).

So how do you find your loved one then? Well the cemetery should always have good records of the GPS coordinates of the body and someone there should be able to help you find it (because your guess is as good as mine about how GPS coordinates work until Apple makes a Find That Body app).

You can also save some money by digging the grave yourself. If you happen to own a backhoe, you’re likely to be outta luck though, because green cemeteries are shovel and pickaxe type places. On the flip side, there’s a lot to be said catharsis wise about being actively involved in the internment of your loved ones. In olden days, when natural burial was the only type of burial at all, generally the women took care of the body and the men dug the graves – say whatever you want about gender roles, I’m mostly just getting at the idea that “helping” the burial process along can be very healing.

Personally, I’m a lot less squicked out about the idea of helping dig a grave than I would be about cleaning a dead body. You also won’t have to dig as deep as a traditional cemetery because bodies are usually only buried about 3 feet deep to help speed up decomosition.

If you’re DIY-ing this funeral, you may wonder, how exactly do we get a corpse into a 3 foot deep hole without jumping in there with them? Well… you could jump in there with them. Other alternatives include using a quilt or canvas straps. Some shrouds even come with straps sewn into them to make lowering the body into the ground easier.

Say you did want to bury Grandma under the apple tree in the backyard. Well, if you live in a busy neighborhood, this is not likely to be approved. However, if you live in a rural area and own more than 5 acres of land, it’s not out of the question. Your best bet is to visit the Funeral Consumers Alliance and shell out $5 to download your state laws.

My Visit to Steelmantown Cemetery

At the green cemetery I visited, I actually thought the markers were pretty cool. Some were properly engraved on rocks, others were clearly home made – either etched in wood or crudely carved onto stone, some were marked by a twig sticking out of the mound or a pretty arrangement of pinecones, but all of them seemed very personal.

It appeared to be a hybrid cemetery in that there were some traditional looking gravestones from the late 1700’s, 1800’s and early 1900’s around the little church-like building. But once you ventured a little past that, it switched to clay markers in the ground. From there, you could walk on a little path into the wood and things started to look more like I expected. Off to the sides of the path were assorted mounds, marker with stones or sometimes nothing at all, but they were very distinctive. I knew immediately what I was looking at.

I actually fell more in love with the idea of a green burial from visiting there. It seemed so much closer to nature and extremely peaceful. Don’t get me wrong, traditional cemeteries usually seem pretty peaceful to me too, but I’ve never noticed such a strong element of feeling connected to nature the way I did in Steelmantown Cemetery.

It may sound a little strange, but I really liked the two paths they’d laid out. The idea of going to visit someone I love and then strolling through the woods for a little bit thinking about them sounds a heck of a lot nicer to me that staring at a name on a plaque in one of those monster mausoleums popping up (I have an uncle who calls them “filing cabinets”).

So, wondering where you can set this up for yourself? Check out this comprehensive list of green cemeteries in the U.S. courtesy of the New Hampshire Funeral Resources, Education & Advocacy.

If you thought this was interesting, check out the other two posts in the series: 

• Green Funeral Homes
• Green Funeral Products

And let’s close out the series with this great YouTube channel I found – Ask a Mortician – and her take on traditional vs. green burial:

Sources:

“Cremation.” The Natural Death Centre Independent Funeral Advice. Web. 9 July 2014.

Lewis, Marilyn. “Rest at home forever? Home burials surprisingly legal.” MSN Real Estate. Web. 9 July 2014.