Eco-Friendly... in the Afterlife

You've done all the things to reduce your carbon footprint: recycle, use electric yard equipment, heck you even plug your car in and compost your food waste, but have you considered composting yourself? Do your choices for the afterlife reflect your eco-friendly lifestyle? 

A single cremation emits around 534.8 pounds of carbon dioxide, as much as the average household produces in 6 days. Environmental regulations require that most U.S. crematoriums employ a filtration or scrubbing system, called after-chambers, that neutralize pollutants like mercury emissions from dental filings. But this doesn't capture the CO2 or reduce the amount of gas & energy that is used. On average, cremation requires the same amount of energy as a single person does in a month & about as much gas as it takes to takes to fuel an SUV or take a 500-mile road trip.

Traditional burial is arguably worse from an environmental perspective: casket burials and the associated materials use 100,000 tons of steel and 1.5 million tons of concrete each year. They also use around 77,000 trees & 4.3 million gallons of embalming fluids as well as other toxins such as radiotherapy or chemotherapy drugs, which leak into the earth,  polluting the water and soil. Burial space is also becoming increasingly scarce and expensive in built-up areas. The average cost today, for a traditional funeral, is just north of $8500. 

It was with the rise of the industrial age when natural after-death options fell out of favor in the U.S. In recent years, however, natural internment has made a comeback, promising to protect the planet and pocketbook alike. Here are 5 eco-friendly options to make your last act on earth an earth-friendly one.

Mushroom Suit

The mushroom suit, or infinity burial suit, was developed by Jae Rhim Lee, founder of Coeio, a California-based green burial company. The suit, which comes in black or neutral, is made from natural biodegradable materials lined with special mushroom spores to suit—and eventually consume—a dead body. The mushrooms, Jae Rhim Lee says, “are specially trained to devour dead human tissue”.

The human body is a toxic mess and the mushrooms go to work consuming and purifying those toxins - its called mycoremediation - and they leave the earth cleaner than when they found it. According to Lee, once the tissue is broken down, the mushrooms channel the nutrients from the body to an intricate network of fungi in the soil that passes the sustenance on to trees. In other words, your last act could be feeding the forest with your now sanctified remains.

Body Farm

Back in the 70’s anthropologist William Bass wanted to study how bodies decompose naturally, using donated cadavers. He created a “farm” for forensic anthropologists to study a wide array of body decomposition scenarios...decomposing in a swamp, eaten by wild animals or crows or maggots…you get the general nightmarish imagery :/

Body farms are vital to our understanding of how bodies decay, which, in turn, is essential to solving crimes. Additionally, body farmers are responsible for massive developments in criminal science and thanatology (the study of death); it’s aided in critical discoveries including the microbial clock —a process by which time of death can be precisely identified by examining the posthumous microbiome.

There are seven body farms currently in operation in the United States & more in the works: Colorado, Illinois, North Carolina, and Tennessee, and two in Texas. People can donate their bodies to a local body farm to further research (and save a good chunk of change on internment).

Green Burial

So you don't want to be eaten by fungi, or the idea of a body farm seems too zombie apocalyptic...here is a more traditional option. Green Burial mimics a traditional burial minus some key “ingredients”: embalming fluids, toxic chemicals & traditional caskets. The gravesite is hand-dug, (this can be done by loved ones as well) and biodegradable caskets, such as wicker ones, can be used, or the body is simply placed in an unbleached cloth shroud. This allows the corpse to decompose naturally, returning its sustenance to the Earth, you know, “ashes to ashes and dust to dust”.  Many green burial grounds also act as wildlife refuges, creating safe spaces for animals and native plant life. Aside from being environmentally friendly, this is a cheaper option than a traditional burial.

Aquamation

Or as it is known in the scientific community: alkaline hydrolysis. It's a process where a high-pressure chamber is filled with water and lye. The water will be heated to anywhere from 200 to 300 degrees, causing the body to dissolve in essentially the same process that happens to a body left on the earth or in a stream—only what would take months in nature takes about 20 hours in an aquamation pod. By the end, all that’s left is the skeleton, or parts thereof, which is ground up into a white powder with a pearly sheen. The remains are given to the loved ones, who may choose to scatter them like ashes or place them in a biodegradable urn. 

This process emits only one-fifth of the carbon dioxide that a traditional cremation does. Aquamation is legal in 18 states and 3 Canadian provinces. 

Recomposing

This could be the next big thing in green burial. Recomposing is exactly what you think it is: returning bodies to the earth naturally, sans concrete, steel, and carcinogens. Seattle-based Katrina Spade is the woman behind this groundbreaking idea.

This practice isn't completely new. Farmers have practiced livestock composting for decades. Wood chips, moisture, and breeze combine to expedite the natural process of decay into nutrient-rich soil. Spade has begun a pilot project at Washington State University with bodies pledged by elderly and terminally ill fans of her cause.

Once legalized, (The Washington state legislature passed bill SB-5001 in late April 2019) a brick and mortar recomposing facility will be constructed. Families will ceremonially lower their shrouded loved ones into the recomposing vessel and cover it with wood chips as they say goodbye. As soon as 30 days later then they can collect the remains, roughly a cubic yard of soil.

Eco-friendly burial is an ever-growing, ever-changing & ever-evolving industry. We shed the light on a few options, but there are more out there & still more up for discussion. Regardless of your choice, mushroom suit, cremation, body farm, etc., it's important to have that conversation & make those plans even when they aren't immediately needed. The laws and regulations surrounding death are complicated and vary from state to state. Make your plans now with your loved ones so that when you move on, your final wishes as an earth lover are honored, and the stress of planning has been removed.

Oh & please do consider organ donation!