Funeral planning is not a topic that comes up often but is one that everybody runs into eventually. Do you know what you want for your funeral?
The first question that generally comes to mind is: “cremation or burial?”, but there are so many more considerations to make if you want your funeral to be a memorable, healing, and meaningful experience for everyone. If you take the time – ahead of time – to plan your end-of-life celebration, the result will be a funeral that properly represents and honours the life you lived. By pre-planning, you also avoid saddling those you leave behind with the burden of guessing what you would want, while they also grieve.
Families today are more eco-conscious than ever, but the funeral industry in general has held on to traditional options that don’t align with modern values. Still, every year an increasing number of people decide to make their funerals more eco-friendly and there are now more than 270 green burial sites in the UK alone. Whether they choose cremation and a biodegradable urn, a full green burial, or one of the many other options available, the entire industry is heading toward a greener future.
Below are five compelling reasons to consider planning a greener funeral for yourself:
Make Your Memorial a Better Representation of Your Unique Life
Everyone lives life a little differently. We all have different interests, lifestyles, hobbies, and attitudes that influence who we are and how people remember us. It doesn’t make sense for us all to have the same funeral.
Instead, we can create unique funeral experiences that honour the individual that lived. If they were a marine biologist, their ashes could be sent out to sea in a biodegradable urn shaped like a sea turtle. An avid hiker could be scattered on top of a mountain, or a gardener’s ashes could be in an urn that grows a tree. Families that want to keep a loved one close can buy an urn that is not only upcycled but will last indoors for years as a memorial and will fully biodegrade over time if eventually buried. It only makes sense for the ashes of someone who valued sustainability and equality to end up in a fair trade-certified, ethical urn.
The wide variety of green options available lets families do something that is meaningful on a more personal level.
Lower Your Funeral’s Environmental Footprint and Reconnect with Nature
This should go without saying, but green funeral options are better for the environment. Traditional burials use non-sustainable hardwood and metal caskets or coffins, concrete vaults, land, and water for cemeteries, and carcinogenic chemicals for embalming. People often choose cremation to be greener, but families that would prefer a burial can opt for a natural burial, also known as a woodland burial. A natural burial forgoes the use of embalming fluids, vaults, or anything deemed unnecessary. A fully biodegradable coffin or shroud is used instead of a traditional coffin, and the burial usually takes place in a green cemetery dedicated to natural burials and often conservation.
Many families find meaning in the process of “returning to the Earth” through natural burial, and natural burials often have more participation from family and loved ones. Assisting with tasks like digging the grave or carrying the coffin can help push participants through the grieving process, and families say that participation helps the healing process.
Green Options are Contemporary
One problem with traditional burial is that it hasn’t evolved over the years, so traditional options may feel outdated and impersonal. People today are more transient and are bringing fewer physical attachments with them. It’s hard to justify a traditional burial if your family won’t be near the cemetery to visit, and many people would rather not worry about bringing a full brass urn with them every time they move. Green options, on the other hand, have room to be creative and are catered toward modern values.
For some, it may make more sense to cremate a loved one, scatter their ashes somewhere meaningful and create an online memorial to honour the loved one. Families value scattering a loved one in a personal, meaningful place instead of a traditional cemetery. We created a program that lets families digitally mark the location of scattered remains anywhere in the world on our map, where they can create an online memorial to be shared or returned to.
Or, maybe a natural burial in a conservation cemetery will create the best sense of healing for someone’s loved ones. There are many eco-friendly funeral options available to families today to fit their unique personalities and situations.
Green Options Offer Flexibility
Studies have found that one of the most important aspects of funeral planning is flexibility, which along with space and cost concerns has made cremation the norm. Families value being able to “do it their own way” when it comes to remembering a loved one.
Some families may want to keep ashes in an urn at home, some may want to create memorial jewellery and scatter the remains, and others may want to split the remains between family members to be handled as they see fit.
Biodegradable urns are an eco-friendly way to add flexibility to scattering. For example, many people want to scatter on water, but the natural wind on the ocean can turn a memorial service into a haunting memory. Urns that are created to float in the water, before gracefully sinking and biodegrading, make scattering on the water a purposeful, dignified experience.
Green Options Are More Affordable
Thankfully, green options are accessible to everyone. There should never be a need to sacrifice dignity or leave an unnecessary footprint on the environment when planning a funeral for a loved one. Cremation followed by scattering with a biodegradable urn would be the most cost-effective way to have an eco-friendly funeral for a loved one. Still, even the higher-priced green options are generally more affordable than decorative urns made from precious metals like bronze and copper.
Green burials are less expensive than traditional burials thanks to their minimal nature, and entirely new options may become available in the UK soon, such as Natural Organic Reduction and Alkaline Hydrolysis (aka Water Cremation). These options will mean more eco-friendly options are available at a variety of prices so that every family can leave a lighter footprint on the Earth when planning a funeral.
By Kilian Rempen,
Passages International
