Great collection of green burial info
Ah, good old Grist. Too often lost in the modern online cacophony, I’m always grateful for the bits of their work that float to the surface of my info-stream. This one tackles an asset that totally blurs the tangible/personal line, your own body. Resilient investing tend to lump most of the body-related stuff into the “personal assets” row: health, career, learning. But once we die, well, our body gets pretty darn tangible for our loved ones, and this Grist piece, Find out how you can reduce your footprint even after you’ve kicked the bucket, is a great primer on what to do—and what not to do—with your tangible remains. As they set the stage:
As the sole species responsible for filling the oceans with plastic, pumping the atmosphere full of pollution, clear cutting the world’s forests, and bringing about what could be the sixth great mass extinction, it’s perhaps fitting that when we die, we turn our own corpses into toxic flesh bags that ensure ecological damage for years and years to come. It’s as if someone dared us to come up with the most environmentally harmful burial practices imaginable, and we dutifully complied, stopping just short of strapping vials of radioactive waste to our chests on our way to the grave.
Okay, you got my attention! So what are my options? Well, for starters,cremation isn’t the simple solution I thought it might be. Not only are cremation furnaces energy hogs and carbon-emitters, but there things to consider about the urns as well! For those who like the idea of their full body being buried, of course those fancy caskets take forever to break down, so it’s well worth exploring simpler options like cardboard or cloth. And while cemeteries concerned with subsidence often want you to surround yourself in a concrete vault, that’s another huge carbon footprint to add to your final step here on Earth. The best news here is that green cemeteries are rapidly spreading, and that home burial remains an option for many people who live in rural areas. As Grist notes, “there’s something about returning to the earth in your own backyard that just feels right.”
The Grist piece goes into all the details you need to start your thinking and planning; check it out. But in case that url ends up six feet under, here are some key links:
A Greener Funeral online guide to 150 green cemeteries
State-by-state guide to home burial requirements
Grave Matters, book by Mark Harris on more natural burial options
(that great image up top is from the Life by Life natural burial website)
Tags: consumer guides, lifestyle, personal assets, tangible assets, your home