Green Burials: At the End of Life, Thinking Outside the Coffin

[elleng]

'They offer lower costs, fewer chemicals and a quicker route to being reborn — in one sense, anyway.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/15/business/green-burials-wendy-macnaughton.html?

Some variety of this is for me.

[Lunabell]

1. I want to be a tree

Actually, I don't care that much but I hope my survivors will plant me in a tree somewhere after cremation.

[elleng]

2. No cremation for me,

wearing cotton, in a plain pine box, in a scenic burial spot. (A room with a view is important to me, so I hope my survivors will enjoy the scenery if/when they visit!)

[csziggy]

6. I don't even want the pine box!

Wrap my body in a cotton sheet and stick me in a hole in the ground. If anyone wants to mark where I am buried they can plant a tree there.

I hope I can be buried on my farm, along with a number of my horses, cats and dogs. We've never marked their burial spots, just put them where we could dig a deep enough hole.

[marble falls]

3. In Austin there's a park which will bury you unenbalmed in a fabric shroud for several thousand ...

dollars total. I don't want a stone or ceremony. Just fall back into the earth.

[elleng]

4. Ditto.

There appears to be a place here too, in MD. 'Pushing up daisies' for me.

[essme]

12. You are kidding

People pay "several thousand" to be wrapped up in a sheet and planted? That's ridiculous. Several hundred, sure- but "several thousand?"

Is it the Ringling Brothers Park?

[Nitram]

5. Interesting. I've always wanted to be dumped in a hole next to a tree.

One suggestion I found problematic: burying cremated ashes in a container made of Himalayan salt would be toxic to a tree and would serve to protect the remains from natural decomposittion by bacteria. Not a very greeen solution.

[csziggy]

7. Digging next to a tree could be hard - think of all the roots!

Better than that - plant a tree where you are buried, whether your entire body with a green burial or cremated. If you need a container, use an unfinished wood box. It will degrade along with your remains.

I just want a shroud of plain cotton and a hole, no container at all.

[Nitram]

8. Excellent point, csziggy. We don't want to damage the roots of the tree we will become.

I'll take the CZiggy Plan, please. Ideally, the tree would have plenty of space to grow outwards. In addition, be nice too get permission to be interred on land that is under a perpetual easement forbidding the harvesting of trees. There are a lot of those in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, protecting trees along rivers and streams.

[csziggy]

9. I'm lucky - I own sixty acres so have lots of room to plant trees

In fact when we first bought this farm 40 years ago we planted about two thousand trees. But we still have space in the pastures where we could plant another few hundred trees, LOL.

I plan to keep this place as a park after I die - just have to figure out the legal stuff to make it happen - so there would not be houses built where I am planted.

[Nitram]

10. We have two acres, which is too small to place under easement with any organization I know of.

I would strongly advise you to look into placing your land under a conservation easement that would protect forested and open space land in perpetuity. What state do you live in?

[csziggy]

11. I'm in Florida and will be working with experts

My farm is still partly owned by my parents' estates. Once that is settled and it is all mine I can make the choices to protect the farm. My brother-in-law is an attorney who specialized in land deals (he represented energy companies but he's had to deal with groups protecting the land) and a friend was in one of the groups my BIL fought against in court. Plus I will be seeing an estate attorney after Thanksgiving to start setting things up.

If I live as long as my Mom I have another 30 years to live here and get the right paperwork set up.

[Totally Tunsie]

14. You might want to consider body composting,

which was just approved by Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington state.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/composting-human-bodies-now-legal-washington-state-n1008606

It allows licensed facilities to offer "natural organic reduction," which turns a body, mixed with substances such as wood chips and straw, into about two wheelbarrows' worth of soil in a span of several weeks.

Loved ones are allowed to keep the soil to spread, just as they might spread the ashes of someone who has been cremated — or even use it to plant vegetables or a tree.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

13. Cremation for me.

I just haven't figured out where I'd want my ashes scattered.

[Nitram]

15. I'v always leaned towards cremation, but that does involve a contribution of greenhouse gases.

Becoming fertilizer for a tree, does the opposite. Perhaps the composting method is the best.