Natural Burials
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Green Burial, Natural Burial and Woodland Burial
Green is a completely unregulated word. Like organic 20 years ago, green has a broad definition. The Green Burial Council has its own set of ideals that should be shared, respected and honest to become a member. 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. It is an approach that has been used for centuries by Jews and Muslims. For more, continue reading the following article:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08030/853146-51.stm
Natural Burial
Adapted from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burial
A trend in modern burial is the concept of natural burial. Popularized in the United Kingdom in the late 1990s, natural burial is being adopted in the United States as a method for protecting and restoring the natural environment.
With a natural burial, the body is returned to nature in a biodegradable coffin or shroud. Native vegetation (often a memorial tree) is planted over or near the grave in place of a conventional cemetery monument. The resulting green space establishes a living memorial and forms a protected wildlife preserve.
The practice of natural burial dates back to the late nineteenth century, when Sir Francis Seymour Hayden proposed "earth to earth burial," in a pamphlet of the same name, as an alternative to either cremation or the slow putrefaction of encased corpses. The earth to earth burial movement was part of the short-lived cremation controversy of the 1870s.
Muslims also practice natural burial, with the deceased's body covered in shroud and with the face facing Mecca. Likewise in Orthodox Judaism, embalming is not permitted, and the coffins are constructed so that the body will be returned to the Earth as soon as possible. Such coffins are made of wood, and have no metal parts at all. Wooden pegs are used in the place of nails.
Natural burial grounds are also known as woodland cemeteries, eco-cemeteries, memorial nature preserves, or green burial grounds.
Home Burials Offer an Intimate Alternative
PETERBOROUGH, N.H. — When Nathaniel Roe, 92, died at his 18th-century farmhouse here the morning of June 6, his family did not call a funeral home to handle the arrangements.
Instead, Mr. Roe’s children, like a growing number of people nationwide, decided to care for their father in death as they had in the last months of his life. They washed Mr. Roe’s body, dressed him in his favorite Harrods tweed jacket and red Brooks Brothers tie and laid him on a bed so family members could privately say their last goodbyes.
The next day, Mr. Roe was placed in a pine coffin made by his son, along with a tuft of wool from the sheep he once kept. He was buried on his farm in a grove off a walking path he traversed each day.
Read the whole New York Times Article...