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Green funerals offer a more eco-friendly return to the earth
By Sarah Lehr
YOUNGSTOWN
It’s possible to eat green, shop green and live green. Now, funeral homes and cemeteries are catering to those who wish to die green.
Mitchell Planey, managing funeral director at Becker Funeral Homes, said so-called green or eco-friendly burials offer the epitome of “ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” a phrase used in the Book of Common Prayer and based on Genesis.
Those who suffer environmental pangs of conscience may take comfort in believing their damage to the planet will end once they die.
Not so, say advocates of green funerals.
The Green Burial Council, a nonprofit founded in 2005, is the nation’s foremost (and seemingly only) watchdog of green “death care” providers. The GBC has a three-tier certification system for green burial grounds. No cemetery in the Mahoning Valley has earned the official GBC stamp of approval. Two area death-care providers, however – Lane Family Funeral Homes and Becker Funeral Homes – are certified by the GBC for offering greener options.
Dave Knarr, a funeral director with Lane Family Funeral Homes, said like most trends in the funeral business, the demand for eco-friendly or natural burials “comes and goes in waves.” He’s overseen a “handful” of green burials, he said, though he answers questions about them often.
The cost for a natural burial ends up being about what a traditional burial would be, Knarr said, especially since the closest certified natural burial ground from Youngstown is about an hour-and-a-half’s drive away at Foxfield Preserve in Wilmot.
Foxfield Preserve, which doubles as a wilderness center that gives tours to students, lacks the manicured lawns and headstones of most cemeteries. Instead, bodies are buried in 10-by-12-foot plots, 31/2 feet below the ground in an area that’s permitted to be overrun with woods and prairie.
In a fully green burial, the body will return completely to the earth. This means that the corpse must wear biodegradable clothing.
For those who wish to meet the green reaper, both Lane and Becker funeral homes offer green-certified coffins that are biodegradable. Since metal will not decompose, even the coffin hinges are made of wood.
Traditional cemeteries use vaults to encase graves and keep the topography of the land intact. Older cemeteries often have rolling hills because a lack of vaults has caused the ground to collapse in on itself.
At Foxfield Preserve and other natural burial grounds, vaults are strictly forbidden. A body is simply lowered into the ground in a biodegradable coffin or, if the deceased truly wishes to go back to basics, a person can choose to forgo the coffin and encase the body only in a cotton shroud.
If a person wants a “greener” option but doesn’t wish to travel as far as Foxfield Preserve, Knarr said Lane Family Funeral Homes works with nearby cemeteries that a allow a sort of compromise in the place of a traditional vault, involving a simple concrete box placed upside-down over a coffin.
Embalming – a chemical process that delays the natural decomposition of a corpse – also is forbidden in a green burial. This means that natural funerals can shorten the number of visiting days that loved ones have with a body. Knarr said that though there’s no Ohio law prohibiting people from viewing an unembalmed body and there’s no evidence that such a body carries diseases, the issue is considered one of good taste and dignity.
At Becker Funeral Homes, if someone requests a natural burial, morticians will use a substance called “Enigma” in lieu of traditional embalming fluid. Enigma does not contain formaldehyde, a carcinogen present in embalming fluid, and will sanitize the body but not preserve it, Planey said.