Having a ‘green’ eco friendly funeral and burial is a great way to make sure that when you have left the planet your carbon foot print follows!

It has been calculated that coffins, headstones and cemeteries all come with fairly weighty carbon baggage. The figures that have come to light suggest that an eco burial could save up to 130 kg of CO2. To help put this figure in perspective, one tree breathes in and converts in about 900 kg of CO2 emissions over it’s lifetime.

You may think that a cremation is an eco friendly choice but the gas furnaces (heated up to around 900 DegC) used to perform single cremation have been suggested to use around 160 kg of Co2.

So what is a “Green burial”?

A green burial is focused on being kinder to the environment. Coffins can be made of biodegradable cardboard or papier maché and burials take place in a protected green or woodland area. There are already more than 250 such areas around the UK alone with keen interest being shown by the Church Of England as part of it’s plan to become more eco-friendly.

Green burial sites can be indistinguishable from wild meadows and blend in with the surrounding countryside and can be passed over to wildlife trusts when they become full.

What differences will a green burial make?

A green burial helps the environment in many ways, a list of which follows-

Coffins, made from recycled materials use less energy to manufacture than coffins made using hardwood and metal. They also help save deforestation, which is second only to energy generation for greenhouse gas emissions.

Hand dug, shallow graves are used for a green burial to avoid the need for diesel powered excavators. Shallow graves also allow the body to decay in a more natural manor, avoiding the stronger greenhouse gas, called methane that is produced by bodies that are buried much deeper (a problem caused by the body being starved of oxygen).

Embalming fluids are not permitted in green funerals, which means that the body is buried quickly and minimal energy is used to keep it refrigerated. A body that is awaiting cremation can typically be kept refrigerated for up to 9 days.

Green burial grounds avpid the use of concrete cases which support the weight of the earth above the coffin. The process of manufacturing a single vault often produces more than 130kg of CO2.

Green burials often allow tree’s to be planted on the grave. Tree’s extract carbon from the atmosphere, store it in their leaves and roots and later release it as oxygen.

Green Burials are the way forward!