'Green' burials get a boost

There are green buildings, green cars, even green weddings. Now comes one of the latest, and ultimately last moves, environmentally conscious consumers can make -- green burials.Forgoing embalming, metal caskets and concrete burial vaults, green burials instead cover the body with a shroud, place it inside a biodegradable wooden or cardboard box and bury it in a woodland, where a new tree or a stone marks the grave. This natural approach, proponents say, is far less damaging to the Earth because it eliminates formaldehyde, a chemical used in embalming, as well as barriers that simply delay the body's inevitable decay.The practice, which began in the United Kingdom and in recent years has spread to California and other parts of the country, recently received a boost from Pittsburgh's Roy A. Hunt Foundation. It awarded a $5,000 grant to the Green Burial Council of Santa Fe, N.M., seeking to establish a national network of funeral homes to provide green burials.Josh Slocum, executive director of the Funeral Consumers Alliance in Vermont, a national group with 400,000 members that aims to educate consumers about cost and procedures involved in funerals, says green burial is "not just for Californians anymore" and exemplifies "good old-fashioned Yankee simplicity and frugality."It can be inexpensive. It's not wasteful of money or resources. ... It's not about the beautiful casket. It's about the family participating in an important life passage," Slocum said.Joe Sehee, founder of the Green Burial Council, contends green burials are a way for funeral directors to reconnect with families who have avoided funeral homes by taking a body directly to a crematoria.When Jessica Mitford published her scathing book, "The American Way of Death," in 1963, Sehee said, she "put cremation on the map. That's the way you circumvent the death merchant."The funeral industry is either going to respond or lose this (the green burial) business."Sehee believes green burials reduce the amount of waste involved in conventional funerals and, with the proper planning, will conserve land that would otherwise be developed.He regularly urges funeral directors, who began losing business to crematories in the 1960s, to offer the service. According to the Funeral Consumers Alliance, the average American funeral costs $6,600 while a cremation without a funeral, known in the industry as "direct disposition," is well under $1,000."Ninety percent of the people who are attracted to green burial otherwise are going to do a direct cremation. You are going to make more money ... facilitating a green burial," Sehee said.Ramsey Creek, the first woodland burial ground in the United States, opened in 1998 in Westminster, S.C., on 40 acres of farmland once used to grow cotton. Visitors to Ramsey Creek can walk trails through the land and may not even notice the graves.There also are woodland burial grounds in Greensprings, outside of Ithaca, N.Y., as well as in California, Texas and Florida.Frank Ashbaugh, vice president of Pittsburgh's chapter of the Funeral Consumers Alliance, recently wrote letters to 21 local cemeteries to see if any of them offered green burials. He received no response. In follow-up phone calls to 11 cemeteries, Ashbaugh learned that none of the cemeteries was interested in providing "green burials."William Howard, vice president of sales for Homewood Cemetery in Pittsburgh, said a portion of land in a 50-acre swath of the cemetery near Frick Park could possibly be used for green burials."You don't have to be embalmed, and you don't need a vault. I do believe it's something we should consider. I think a lot of people would prefer that type of burial," Howard said. "You should have something for everyone."E-mail Marylynne Pitz at mpitz(at)post-gazette.com. For more stories visit scrippsnews.com