Green Cemetaries

This is from a yahoo mailing list called the compact. Interesting article on green cemetaries:

The Final Compact - I've heard this is now popular Down Under!

RESTING IN PEACE - The Green Goodbye Greensprings Natural Cemetery in upstate New York opened last May and has so far sold 55 grave sites. Each one costs $500, plus another $450 to open and close it. Eco-friendly burials eschew headstones, embalming and pricey caskets made from exotic imported wood Imagine a gently sloping hill covered with fallen leaves, green ferns and bright wildflowers, the branches of sturdy oaks and maples arching overhead. Birds chirp in the trees. Squirrels and chipmunks scamper on the ground. Now imagine yourself buried underneath. No proud shiny headstone engraved "Beloved." No manicured, fertilized grass. Just your body decomposing inside your biodegradable shroud, your tissues feeding the tree roots and who knows what else. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. You can now be politically correct when you're six feet under. It's known as a green or natural burial, a way of combining an eco-friendly interment with land conservation. Make your burial a statement of values by helping create a forest, says Mike Salisbury, one of the founders of the Natural Burial Coop, a group in southern Ontario. "If you're buried where roots grow through your bones, you're doing what you're supposed to do – give back in the end." This idea could take root. Baby boomers, forever defying time, wouldn't so much die as just get replanted. Several groups are trying to establish Canada's first natural burial cemetery. Janet McCausland, vice-president of Green Living Ventures, part of Key Publishing, has proposed that some of the federal Downsview land be converted and is talking with land conservation groups. Salisbury's co-op is looking at three potential sites outside Toronto. And on the west coast, the Memorial Society of B.C., has hopes for two possible places. "It's a way to finance environmental restoration of land, to make sure a Wal-Mart never grows on the old family farm," says Salisbury, 40, a landscape architect and Guelph city councillor. (In Ontario, a potential cemetery must first get municipal approval then comply with provincial standards before it can be licensed.) This latest back-to-the-earth movement started in England about a dozen years ago, then spread to the United States, where four green cemeteries have blossomed, including one in upstate New York. A green goodbye means no toxic embalming chemicals such as formaldehyde. That one is on the European Union's list for possible banning. A nature-loving corpse is entombed in a biodegradable container or shroud. "The metal from coffins buried each year in the U.S. is more than was used to build the Golden Gate Bridge," says Joe Sehee, founder of the Green Burial Council in the U.S., which sets ethical standards for the budding practice. Rather than rip out a hunk of rainforest for a coffin, a burial box might be made from locally harvested wood, wicker or even recycled paper, perhaps decorated with good-bye messages from friends. "As long as the cardboard doesn't look cheap," warns Salisbury, "like you're UPSing the guy to the afterlife." But could eco-sensitive send-offs really deliver? The Natural Burial Coop, formed six months ago, has 25 consumer members who've plunked down $25 in an act of faith to secure a site. The Natural Burial Association, a separate group dedicated to spreading the green grave gospel, has a loyal following of about 50, says executive director McCausland. She speaks to church and interfaith groups who praise the interconnected web of existence concept. In upstate New York's Finger Lakes region, Greensprings Natural Cemetery is 100 acres of old pastures and fields bounded by two 4,000-acre protected forests. Opened last May, the cemetery has sold 55 sites. It has attracted interest from people all over the country, mainly traditional Christians, environmentalists and people looking for a simple, affordable alternative, says Mary Woodsen, president of Greensprings Natural Cemetery Preserve. A Greensprings grave site costs $500 with another $450 to open and close it. Conventional burial digs deeper into your pockets. On average, Ontario consumers spend $2,300 on a casket, although you can go in high style, about $25,000 for the Cadillac version. For a cemetery plot, it's all about location. A grave site in the Toronto core costs about $5,000, while a 905 area one goes for about $2,000, according to Rick Cowan, assistant marketing vice-president for the Mount Pleasant Group, owner of 10 GTA cemeteries. He's heard about green burials at industry meetings, but no one has been asking about it here. "If it raised itself as a void in the marketplace we'd look into it," he says. Mike Driscoll, a small business consultant in Guelph, is a recent green burial convert. He had figured cremation was the way to go; it costs less (about $400 to $500) and you take up less space. But then he got concerned about the fossil fuel used in the process and the toxic materials, such as mercury, released into the air. Natural burial, he decided, was preferable. "It's a beautiful way to end life, to give back to the soil." One of the founders of the co-op, Driscoll, 51, is helping the group plan a line of benign burial products – pine boxes without toxic glues, baskets by Maritime weavers – for members. "No one will get rich on this," he says. Back in upstate New York, the Greensprings cemetery has so far had four burials, two in biodegradable cardboard caskets, one in a coffin made from locally harvested pine, and one in a shroud. "The family," says Woodsen, "prepared her body themselves and sewed beautiful white ribbons on the shroud." One body, packed in dry ice, was flown in from Ohio. The deceased wanted a natural burial, and Greensprings, found online, was the closest. The cemetery has made one not-pure-green concession. The soil is so rocky, a backhoe digs the graves. Some burial preserves with kinder, gentler conditions use old-fashioned muscle-power and shovels. At Greensprings, some of the grave site ceremonies have been quiet and religious, while the others included music and poetry readings. Some have planted saplings to mark the site. While headstones are verboten, a natural unpolished stone, possibly engraved but flush to the ground, would be permissible, says Woodsen. "What could be more beautiful than to become a part of nature, that a molecule from your body ends up in a berry that a bird eats," says Woodsen. "It's completing the circle of life." For more information, see naturalburial.ca, site of the Natural Burial Co-operative, or naturalburialassoc.ca, for the Natural Burial Association. For Greensprings Natural Cemetery, see naturalburial.org , for the Green Burial Council, go to greenburialcouncil.org Credit - Nancy J. White - Life Writer - The Toronto Star - Jan. 26, 2007

Chris Shaver, BSW13 - 1132 Upper Wellington StreetHamilton, ON L9A 3S6 CANADA(905) 974 - 6213 / (905) 385 - 1725http://www.HamiltonVERC.info

"You can forgive someone almost anything. But you cannot tolerate everything... We don't have to tolerate what people do just because we forgive them for doing it. Forgiving heals us personally. To tolerate everything only hurts us all in the long run." -- Lewis B. Smedes