A green funeral is one that has less impact on the planet. But also, often part of what people want is the opportunity to participate more in the funeral process and on the day of the funeral, to be away from the standardised, corporate and time pressured side of funerals. So, the funeral director needs to be flexible, prepared to do things less formally, use something other than a hearse, not all turn up in black and stripes, use a different set of assumptions about what a funeral should be like.
So how do you make your final statement for a more sustainable world by choosing a green funeral?
There are a few musts:
Plan your funeral in advance.
Make your choices and let those left behind know exactly what you want. Funerals are often organised quickly by people who feel under pressure and it’s easy for those left behind to be swept into making conventional choices you may not have made.
Choose burial rather than cremation.
If you can find a cemetery or churchyard that is reusing old graves, that’s a very good option, as is a woodland or natural burial site. If the graves are hand dug that saves the fuel for a mechanical digger.
Don’t be embalmed.
Embalming is a process whereby your blood and body fluids are replaced with a mixture of water and formaldehyde, a substance which can cause allergic reactions, mental disturbance and is linked to several forms of cancer. When a body is buried the formaldehyde leaches into the ground and perhaps eventually into the ground water. In the case of cremation, it may be emitted into the atmosphere. Unless the funeral is more than three weeks after the death or certain circumstances have caused the body to degrade, embalming really is not necessary, so state that you do not want it.
Avoid chipboard veneer coffins,
which are made using formaldehyde. These are by far the most common coffins used for both burial and cremation as they are cheap for the funeral directors to buy and easy to handle. Most natural woodland burial sites won’t allow them.
Avoid coffins made of non FSC timber or metal.
Ask your funeral director or coffin supplier whether the wood comes from FSC sources, and, if you want wood, choose softwoods like pine.
Minimise the amount of fuel needed to transport the mourners.
If you need to travel to the nearest crematorium or natural burial ground, arrange for the mourners to gather locally and hire a bus to transport them to the funeral. For a really local funeral, you could process the coffin by foot. Add a few musicians and flags of bright material and you have a dramatic event.
Minimise the amount of fuel needed to transport the body.
There is no legal requirement to use a big, petrol-thirsty hearse. For many thrifty people who’ve led a sustainable lifestyle, it just seems the wrong choice anyway. You can ask the funeral director if they have another vehicle – a hybrid or electric estate car – or you can use a family car if you have one large enough, or, hire one for the day. Pat arrived in the organic vegetable van he used to drive, which ran on biofuel.
And here’s some other things you could do for a greener funeral
Choose a locally made coffin.
Many of the natural, biodegradable coffins you can buy now are largely made in far-off places, for example bamboo from China, banana leaf and pandanus from Indonesia and increasingly willow coffins come from Poland.
If you buy a plain cardboard or pine coffin, you then give your family and friends the option to decorate it beautifully, with water-based paints.
Don’t use a coffin at all.
There is no legal requirement to use a coffin, instead you can use a shroud. Bellacouche who make felt shrouds have a ‘cradle’ acceptable to many crematoria, who need a firm base for loading the body into the cremator. For burial, if you lay the body on a board, place wadding on top if you want to disguise the body shape and wrap a large amount of thick cotton material around, you then have a shroud you can carry on a stretcher or with ropes.
You can have a burial on private land.
You can bury two family members on your own land providing you meet environmental guidelines on proximity to water. If you have a large piece of land, where you could annex a piece off for perpetuity, this is an option. Having processed the coffin by foot the mile from the funeral director, we held a funeral in a yurt in the garden and made the burial on the edge of the property.
Choose your memorial carefully.
Many memorial stones now are made from stone that’s imported from as far away as India and China. Choose local stone if possible, or some other material such as local wood. Many natural burial sites don’t allow memorial stones at all, or just small, flat plaques.
Choose a site you can visit without lots of car miles.
Whether you have a grave or choose somewhere to scatter or inter the ashes, think about how far you’d need to travel in the car each time if you were to make regular trips.
Depth of burial.
When people are buried ‘six feet under’ the process of decomposition becomes anaerobic gives little benefit to plants and trees. Ask about the possibility of being buried nearer to the surface, which may be possible in a natural burial site.
No cellophane.
Insist that the florist does not wrap the flowers in cellophane, which only mists up and rots them anyway. Ask them to use only natural materials, and, even better, to use only seasonal and local flowers – or pick them from your garden.
Make a carbon offset from your estate.
Most of us have a large carbon footprint. A great legacy to leave is to make a contribution to the Woodland Trust or a carbon offset scheme. An average offset of an entire life’s carbon footprint would cost £8,000-£10,000. Then you can ‘rest in peace’.
It’s not easy for us to face up to our own deaths, but if you do want to leave the planet in the most sustainable way and on your own terms, you are going to have to research these options and leave detailed instructions setting out your wishes. Then you can advise others you know, amplifying the effect of your good work.
For more information about planning your own green funeral, you can receive a free download of our book ‘We Need To Talk About The Funeral’ which explores all the funeral options and how to plan a funeral with heart and soul. For your copy email simon@heartandsoulfunerals.co.uk.
