How to Die Green: Resting in Environment-Friendly Peace

Nowadays, dying can be a costly and environmentally degrading affair. With traditional modes of burial such as interment and cremation, unwanted elements are being released into the ecosystem. In traditional interment, for example, caskets use metals that rust inside out and leach into the groundwater. Toxic embalming chemicals do the same. Talk about contributing to pollution even in death.

Nowadays, alternative methods of burial are gaining acceptance and popularity in Western societies. There is a growing consensus that while life should be lived in as environmentally friendly a way as possible, dying should be no exception - that it should also be done in a more environment-friendly way.

Here are some ways that a person could rest in environment-friendly peace:

Green Burials

Green burials are a widely accepted method in the United Kingdom, where some funeral homes offer plain wooden coffins, cardboard boxes, or woolen shrouds to keep a loved one's remains. The remains are interred in cemetery plots that are planted with trees or flowers and the remains decompose naturally, contributing to the cycling of nutrients as bodies turn into fertilizers. The United States has been slow with this innovation, but there is a growing number of funeral homes that have this feature.

Creative Cremation

A United States company has come up with a way in which to make cremation a creative and environmentally friendly option. With this type of cremation, remains are burnt and made to form "reef balls". These "reef balls" are lowered into the ocean, where it is used to regenerate coral reefs and propagate fish. The process is clean, peaceful, and even helpful to the environment.

Body Donation

This act of body donation is recycling in the truest sense - the remains of a dead person are used to teach the next generation. People can donate their remains to medical schools, where students could use it to study human anatomy. Though sounding queasy at first, medical schools teach students to apply the highest standards of ethics and respect to these remains, and bury them accordingly after use.