A Green Alternative to Expensive Funerals

Most of us have seen the commercials designed to frighten aging America into purchasing life or final arrangement insurance. "The average funeral costs between $6,500 and $10,000. You don't want to leave your loved ones with that burden...do you?" The commercials have a specific goal in mind-to sell. However, for some, they are simply a trigger to look for alternative solutions to the high costs of funerals. In this article, we will pose a less expensive and greener alternative to the traditional funeral.

First, here is a little history lesson. Embalming began to take hold in the United States during the civil war for the preservation of the bodies of soldiers being sent home for burial. It became widely known with the death of President Lincoln, as his body was embalmed to afford extended public view. Even then, public opinion of embalming was not a good one. Embalming was still not widely accepted until the twentieth century. Today, many believe that embalming is a law. It is not. Embalming began as a business, a money making venture, that the vendors advertised and sold as important and necessary. Over time, it became the accepted practice that no one questioned.

Around the 1920's, the modern day funeral business was born and the trappings began to expand and increase cost. Fancy caskets with satin linings and brass hardware, embalming, preparing the body for presentation, viewings, processions, flower wreaths, elaborate funerals, huge gravestones, concrete vaults, vast expanses of graveyards with close cropped grass that serve no other purpose-are these necessary?

How will Baby Boomers view this method of departure? Many baby boomers are known as the "green generation," "hippie generation," and "the back to earthers." Whatever label you put on this generation, it was the one that gave power and persistence to the ideas of living with nature and trying to preserve it. As baby boomers begin to think about their exit from this world, it is likely they will be looking for a "green" exit.

The green funeral would require anything that is put into the ground to be biodegradable, no embalming and simple wooden caskets or shrouds. There would be no ominous gravestones dotting the landscape. Instead there would be hand-dug graves and medallion markers along walking trails with native pants and flowers. It would be captured green space with a small chapel and maybe a water feature, but everything would be centered on the themes of maintaining and complimenting a natural environment.

An insane idea? It seems not. There is already a movement afoot to create green resting places. One is underway in Conyers, Georgia, at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit and there are plans for green cemeteries in Macon and Milton, Georgia. Georgia is not the only state with green thinkers. Just ask pioneers Bill and Kimberley Campbell of South Carolina. What a great final statement for one's life... "Bury me green."