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Let me approach an uncomfortable subject....death, but death with a green tinge.
For this post I researched some websites, and one had a message that I would like to paraphrase:
"In nature, nothing dies. Nature is constantly creating new life from decay."
With
this in mind, why do most of us humans in the USA continue to drain the
lifeblood from our dead and replace it with chemicals, such as
formaldehyde, that contaminates waterways and groundwater downstream?
Whatsmore,
we then put these chemically treated corpses into fancy caskets using
more chemicals in their construction, and then placed into bronze,
copper and/or concrete vaults so the body is not allowed to decompose
in a natural "dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return" manner.
For
the life of me (no pun intended), I can't see how anyone who values
their life and the life around him or her, would want their body to
someday be pickled and putrified in an air-tight box instead of
allowing that body to become one with that around it, to naturally
return to nature in order to support new life growing above it.
Some
folks just don't like the idea of bugs and worms getting into their
dead body. Remember the old song we used to sing as children?
The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out,
The worms crawl in and out of the snout.
This
song was fun to sing as a kid because most of us thought we would never
die, but by the time one reaches 60, one can't help realizing that
someday we too will be dead just like all those who lived before us. We
just need to get used to the idea and get on with our lives.
Some
will say that since they prefer to be cremated, they won't add to the
pollution that the burial above entails. This isn't true. When your
body is burned up, the following chemicals get into the air, such as
dioxin, hydrochloric acid, hydrofluoric acid, sulphur dioxide, carbon
dioxide and even mercury from our fillings, as well as what chemicals
are let off when other artificial parts of one's body are burned.
Nevertheless,
if one had to choose from the two methods described above, probably
cremation would be one step better than the so-called "traditional"
burial.
According to the Casket and Funeral Association of
America, the Cremation Association of North America, Doric, Inc., the
Rainforest Network and Pre-Posthumous Society, the "traditional" burial
today puts into the ground the following:
- 30 million broad feet of precious (sometimes exotic) hardwoods,
- 14,000 tons of steel vaults;
- 90,000 tons of steel caskets,
- 2,700 tons of copper and bronze caskets,
- 1.6 million tons of concrete, and
- 827,000 gallons of formaldehyde or other embalming fluid.
All that just to preserve a body that really wants to go back to dust.
As a matter of fact, in a recent AARP poll, when people were asked about their burials, the survey showed the following results:
- 8 percent favored the so-called "traditional" burial discussed above;
- 18 percent favored cremation; and
- 70.4 percent favored a "green" burial.
Green burials, which are the true traditional burial
dating back to biblical times, uses no caskets (or sometimes simple
cardboard or pine), no embalming, no vaults and consequently no
pollution. In addition the few such green cemeteries here in the USA
promise to never use herbicides or pesticides on their land, which is
not the case with most cemeteries in this country. But that's not the
entire story: the land used for the green cemetery is made into a
Nature Preserve, meaning that the land will never be developed into a
subdivision, but will instead be a place where wildlife, both animal
and fauna, can grow and thrive in peace. One USDA Natural Resources
Conservation reports notes that 2.2 million acres in this country are
prevented from being developed because they are cemeteries.
Beware,
most of your funeral directors won't push the idea of green funerals
because they are so much more reasonably priced, and usually they get
very little of that. And remember, no state in the nation requires that
dead people be embalmed.
Two green cemeteries in the USA are
Ramsey Creek in South Carolina and Greensprings Natural Cemetery in New
York. However, I expect more such cemeteries to become available soon
as we Baby Boomers age. You know, we have always been a little bit more
choosie and different.
For more information on green funerals and burials, check out eco-funerals on Wikipedia.
And
remember, our kids and grand kids need to live on this earth after we
die. Don't they deserve more land that is preserved forever for the
little critters and natural wildlife that was put here with us
thousands, maybe millions of years ago?
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