Tonight I had the pleasure of going to the Osher Jewish Community Center in San Rafael to hear Jason Norris speak about Fernwood Cemetery. Fernwood is in Mill Valley and is the only green cemetery in the state of California.
He began but talking about our current burial practices which consist of embalming and caskets made of hardwoods and/or metals. He had some great numbers: 22,500 cemeteries in the U.S.. 30 million tons of hardwoods are buried each year along with 104 tons of steel, 1.6 million tons of concrete and 2700 tons of copper. The funeral industry uses 827,000 gallons of embalming fluid. For those that don’t know, when being buried by a “traditional” cemetery, the plot is dug with a tractor and a concrete lining is place into the ground and the casket sits in it. This is really for convenience sake as it keeps the ground from sinking and makes for easy mowing for the golf course look to the park.
The green burial is basically wrapping the body in a shroud and placing 18 inches under ground and in about a year, it is gone; digested back into the planet from which it came.
Even cremation isn’t very green. After cremation carbon ash remains and that isn’t good for anything nor does it decompose or serve as fuel for plants. Human ashes just sit there.
Green burial is truly the only green way to deal with body disposal. Here is a link to read further about green burials and why they are the only way to go. http://beatree.com/
Filed under: Green Burial | Tagged: Body Care, Green, Green Cemetery, Post Death
