The Green Burial Guidebook Read online

  Praise for The Green Burial Guidebook

  “The landscape of death care is shifting, and Elizabeth Fournier is a wonderful guide. She brings us gently through green burials, home funerals, and more. The Green Burial Guidebook is essential for anyone planning for a sustainable death-care experience.”

  — Katrina Spade, founder of Recompose

  “The Green Burial Guidebook is an engaging primer for first-timers looking to understand the fundamentals of the rapidly changing world of end-of-life and after-death care practices and possibilities. Through firsthand stories and insider savvy, Elizabeth Fournier has laid out some of the most doable, practical steps, choices, and skills you will need for planning your final affair. Thoughtful, well organized, and easy to take in.”

  — Lee Webster, home funeral and green burial advocate and editor of Changing Landscapes: Exploring the Growth of Ethical, Compassionate, and Environmentally Sustainable Green Funeral Service

  “Elizabeth Fournier continues to help change the landscape of death care as we know it today. A wonderful guide for the layperson and funeral professional alike, The Green Burial Guidebook is a comprehensive treasure trove of information and personal experiences. It sheds light on the cemetery industry and the grassroots movement that seeks to return after-death care to what it used to be: families lovingly caring for their deceased in a final act of kindness. Bravo!”

  — Ed Bixby, president of the Green Burial Council and owner of Steelmantown Cemetery and Purissima Natural Burial Grounds

  “Elizabeth Fournier introduces The Green Burial Guidebook as a ‘simple, straightforward guide,’ and it is — but it’s also much more. This book is lovely, thoughtful, and beautifully crafted, and Fournier is the gracious guide at your side. She walks you through what it takes to make a loved one’s green burial both uplifting and down-to-earth. The what, when, where, why, who, and how? She’s got them covered. Read The Green Burial Guidebook not only for all you’ll learn but for the message of hope and joy it brings.”

  — Mary Woodsen, founding president of Greensprings Natural Cemetery Preserve and advisory board member of the Green Burial Council

  “A straightforward handbook on more sustainable and meaningful death care in the United States and how to plan for it.”

  — Suzanne Kelly, PhD, author of Greening Death: Reclaiming Burial Practices and Restoring Our Tie to the Earth

  “Elizabeth Fournier’s Green Burial Guidebook will change the way you think about death. The book is an informative and consoling read, offering tips and tools that will endure through the years. Fournier speaks with candor and kindness, as if she were seated right beside us at our kitchen table. She teaches about the realities and sacred possibilities in green burial, offering a life-affirming guide for those who wish to have a deeper connection to the earth, to the natural processes of life and death, and to their beloveds.”

  — Lisa Smartt, author of Words at the Threshold and founder of the Final Words Project (www.finalwordsproject.org)

  “The Green Burial Guidebook speaks to one of the deepest responsibilities of being human: caring for and burying our dead. This friendly guide will help you consider how your approach to death can be kinder to the earth and leave your community stronger.”

  — Holly Pruett, life-cycle celebrant, home funeral guide, and Death Talk Project founder (www.hollypruettcelebrant.com and www.deathtalkproject.com)

  “Truly everything you need to plan a green send-off. A lively, informative, and uplifting book.”

  — Mark Harris, author of Grave Matters: A Journey through the Modern Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial

  New World Library

  14 Pamaron Way

  Novato, California 94949

  Copyright © 2018 by Elizabeth Fournier

  All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means — electronic, mechanical, or other — without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  The material in this book is intended for education. It is not meant to take the place of legal advice from a licensed attorney.

  Text design by Tona Pearce Myers

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available.

  First printing, May 2018

  ISBN 978-1-60868-523-3

  Ebook ISBN 978-1-60868-524-0

  Printed in Canada on 100% postconsumer-waste recycled paper

  New World Library is proud to be a Gold Certified Environmentally Responsible Publisher. Publisher certification awarded by Green Press Initiative. www.greenpressinitiative.org

  10987654321

  In loving remembrance of my gentle parents who shine their light on me from above. I am truly nothing without you.

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  Part 1. What Is Green Burial?

  Chapter 1. Green Burial, the Funeral Industry, and the Environment

  Chapter 2. Green Burial Practices: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

  Part 2. A Guide to Green Burials

  Chapter 3. Making a Plan: Green Burials and Home Funerals

  Chapter 4. Legalities to Consider

  Chapter 5. It Takes a Village: Getting Help and Hiring Professionals

  Chapter 6. A Place to Rest: Green Cemeteries and Backyard Burials

  Chapter 7. Green Burial Containers: Handmade Caskets and Shrouds

  Chapter 8. Green Embalming and Handling the Body

  Chapter 9. Conducting a Home Funeral or Green Burial

  Chapter 10. Cremation

  Chapter 11. A Green Goodbye: Memorials and Mementos

  Acknowledgments

  Endnotes

  Resources

  Green Burial Grounds in the United States and Canada

  Index

  About the Author

  INTRODUCTION

  Death is an integral part of life, as natural and predictable as being born. But whereas birth is cause for celebration, death has become a dreaded and unspeakable issue to be avoided by every means possible in our modern society. Perhaps it is that death reminds us of our human vulnerability in spite of all our technical advances. We may be able to delay it, but we cannot escape it.

  — Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

  Despite amazing advances in medical science and technology, the mortality rate for human beings stands at a whopping 100 percent. It’s a fact: All of us are going to die someday. Yet in the face of this statistical reality, we are often unprepared when death arrives. When death claims those we love, we struggle with our grief, seek comfort from relatives and friends, and cling to the accepted, society-approved ways to celebrate and memorialize a person’s life — all while managing the unfamiliar, stressful tasks of funeral and burial arrangements.

  Yet our modern burial customs often fall short of our needs. The typical ceremony run by a funeral home — one that involves embalming and a casket burial in a traditional cemetery — not only can fail to provide a satisfying ritual for mourning, but it frequently leaves behind lasting financial and ecological burdens. Traditional burials can become very expensive, and they usually lead to environmental damage. Yet in the upheaval of the moment, we often make choices that are more elaborate and expensive than we want or need because we don’t realize we have options: options to simplify, options to be more hands-on, options to go green. We’ve become convinced that parting with lots of money — as our final gift to someone that allows them to eternally rest in peace — is just the way it is and the way it’s always been.

  This isn’t true. Throughout most of human history, burial practices have differed from what they are toda
y, and despite appearances, modern American cemeteries are not tranquil green gardens. From the headstones to the caskets to the pesticide-treated lawns, they are instead increasingly toxic places whose soil is filled with chemicals and metals that are harmful to nature and to the living.

  Not exactly ashes to ashes and dust to dust.

  This doesn’t have to be the case. What if our burial customs actually facilitated the “cycle of life,” so that we sustained the environment rather than harmed it? What if our rituals were personal, heartfelt, community endeavors that didn’t end in an expensive final bill that strained our resources? What if we planned ahead for our own eventual death, and so ensured that our burial makes a positive impact on our family and the environment even long after we are gone?

  Death is a natural occurrence, and ideally the ways that we mourn and dispose of the dead should feel natural and support nature. Today, many people are trying to lessen the negative impact of human society on the environment in a multitude of ways: by supporting renewable energy, by driving hybrid or electric cars, by eating healthy foods, by promoting sustainable agriculture, by using their own cloth bags at the grocery store, and so on. Another area where we need to consider our impact on the planet is in how we handle the dead.

  Green burial is a way of caring for our dead with the least possible environmental impact. It is a set of body preparations and burial practices that allow a body to decompose naturally in a site specifically set aside for this type of environmentally sound resting at peace. Meanwhile, hand in hand with green burials, home funerals are becoming more common, in which people create their own services and make their own end-of-life arrangements, rather than hiring the services of a mainstream funeral home.

  Green burials and home funerals are not new ideas; they have been practiced for thousands of years and are still universally practiced in many countries around the world. While death can be a difficult subject, I hope that this book helps you plan for its eventuality. I hope it opens your eyes to all the choices that are available to you when it comes to funerals and burials. I hope it helps you see that it’s possible to lower costs and lower impacts while still creating a beautiful send-off for the person who has passed.

  Ultimately, that’s the aim of green burial, to leave the Earth a little better than it was before your loved one was placed into its gentle and natural embrace.

  My First Green Burial

  As a small child, I saw a lot of people die, and I attended their rosaries, visitations, funerals, and burials. I knew these people; they were my neighbors, church members, and even my family. My mother and grandparents, who lived with us, all died before I was ten years old. As I grew older, I learned to nurture friends when they had deaths to deal with, whether the deaths involved a grandmother or a gerbil.

  As a young adult, it felt only natural to pursue mortuary science and become a funeral director. My first foray into the funeral industry was as the live-in night keeper in a hilly cemetery at age twenty-two. I received my funeral director’s license in California first, and then I moved back to my home state of Oregon and passed the test there. After many years, I finally was able to own and operate my own funeral parlor.

  I can truly attest that being a funeral director is less a job than a calling. I used to have a cherished reoccurring dream of being an angel in white. It made me feel beautiful, radiant, and most of all, at peace. I often feel that my life as a mortician bears a certain resemblance to the angel in white. I am giving myself to others, and in return, I am given life.

  This is how I run my business. I know that death isn’t a failure, a battle that has been lost. Conventional wisdom says we should tell someone we are sorry for their loss, and that we should look but not touch. But I have learned that people grieve in many different ways and that they are their most authentic selves during this process. Emotions come in waves, and it is hard to feel that an hour or two spent in the funeral home is intimate enough, is time enough to say goodbye. I’ve learned that whatever I can do to help people be more present in the process certainly aids in bereavement healing.

  Yet about ten years back, my calling as an undertaker took on new meaning. My funeral parlor phone rang, and a woman asked if I could meet her and some friends at their favorite pub to discuss funeral arrangements for a woman named Wanda, who had just died. Wanda’s friends were a close-knit group of gentle people. While filling out the death certificate, they were stumped as to why they weren’t allowed to list Wanda’s occupation as “Wanderer” and her industry as “the Earth.” After all, that was how Wanda saw herself. Her friends came to see me because they felt they could only accurately honor Wanda the Wanderer by laying her to rest on the fifteen country acres where she lived in community with others, but they weren’t sure how to go about doing that.

  In fact, I wasn’t certain this was legal, so I made some calls. The local zoning department confirmed that private land burials were allowed in Wanda’s county, and they explained the regulations to me. I was stunned to find all this out...and excited. So, I lined up a backhoe, and by the next day, we were ready for the fitting ceremony.

  Wanda had walked a green life, and now we would help her walk a green death.

  The service was top-drawer, almost like the kind of party Wanda would have created if she were alive. Her friends and family played drums, chanted, and spoke of her kindness. We all held hands to form a circle around her newly dug resting place and stood in silence as her three sons lowered her gently into the earth. Her tiny frame was cloaked with a quilt she had made as a teenager. Soon, the plain grave was covered with soil. We left a raised knoll of dirt on top to compensate for the settling that would happen over time. We used no grave marker, just native foliage. After a closing prayer, we feasted on fish caught down the way in the Clackamas River.

  Wanda’s family and friends conducted her funeral in their own way, and I could see how much comfort it gave them to be able to stay with her and take care of her body themselves. They were with her the whole process: from the time she died until the time she was buried. It was like in the old days, but I felt as if I had discovered something new. For once I didn’t have the nagging feeling that the whole experience of burial was falling short for the mourners. I felt I’d been true to my calling as a funeral director to help a loving group of family and friends get what they needed from their send-off. Burial is the last thing you can do for someone, all of which makes green burial positively down-to-earth and uplifting.

  After the burial, the family called to share their collective consciousness that Wanda wasn’t isolated in her grave space. She had become one with the bionetwork that supported every plant and creature, and as she rested eternally in nature’s embrace, life would now surround her.

  Overview of This Guidebook

  Green burial may seem like an avant-garde choice, but in the not-too-distant past, we would keep our recently deceased loved one at home, buy a casket from the local general store, prepare a resting space in the backyard or churchyard, and then conduct the burial ourselves with some simple reflection and quiet dignity. As you will learn in these pages, it is legal today to bury a loved one without an embalmed body, nor do you need to use a gasketed casket inside a protective grave liner. It’s a myth that all bodies need to be embalmed before burial, and in most states, you aren’t required to hire a funeral director. That said, burial rules and regulations vary by state and local laws, which is why planning ahead for a funeral, especially for a green burial, is so important, since it avoids unexpected legal problems during an already stressful time.

  This book will guide you in that planning, while presenting you with the full range of options to consider. I’ve written this book as a simple, straightforward guide to green burial practices, one that shares all the tools and information you need to use more natural, sustainable methods. My hope is you will mark up this guidebook, bending page corners, and writing notes in the margins so this becomes your go-to green tool kit whenever you need
it.

  In part 1, I briefly discuss the topic of green burial in general. In chapter 1, I explore the environmental impacts of current burial practices and the funeral industry. In chapter 2, I look at various religious and social attitudes about death and burial, along with some of the different ways that people around the world currently practice green burial and hope to do so in the near future.

  Meanwhile, part 2 is a step-by-step guide to planning your own green burial and conducting your own home funeral. You might say, green burials come in a vast spectrum of shades. What’s right for you really depends, and what’s best in each particular situation will certainly vary. You may wish to use a funeral home and the cemetery where the rest of your family is buried, but still conduct the greenest burial possible, or you may want to build your own casket, dig a backyard grave, and handle the body yourself. This book will help you in both these situations, as well as many more.

  Green burials and home funerals are meant to reflect the unique expression and needs of the people involved. There is no “standard format,” and you will need to decide for yourself what works and what’s important. On the other hand, there are full-service green funeral homes that can assist you, and there are trained professionals who can act as guides throughout your journey. With green burials, you are in charge, but you don’t have to do it alone.

  Meanwhile, throughout this book, you will find two types of sidebars: “Tips” provide just that, nitty-gritty details that I’ve spent years learning so you don’t have to. The other, “Tales from the Grave,” shares unusual burial facts and traditions from around the globe, since the dead have more stories than a library. At the end of the book are further resources, endnotes, and an index.

  Ultimately, my fervent hope is that the tools and techniques you learn here will provide the practical, logistical, and spiritual support you need to know the joys and sorrows of laying your loved one to rest in your own way, in the manner that is most meaningful and important to you. I certainly hope that includes a range of green or environmentally friendly practices. But whatever you choose to do, I would be remiss not to acknowledge the obvious: Death is hard, and we are rarely prepared for it. In the moment, faced with the reality of death, sometimes all our planning goes out the window, and we have to do whatever we have to do to take care of ourselves and others. Emotions can be raw and unexpected, and we may not be able to follow through on everything we mean to. That’s okay. Life isn’t perfect, and neither is death, which is one reason why people are sometimes grateful to hand funeral planning over to professionals.