Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Coffin Made from Banana Leaves (photo: Ecoffins USA)
Going green can entail not only how a person lives life on the planet, but how they leave it as well. Jane Hillhouse, founder of FinalFootprint.com, is part of a growing movement to offer environmentally-friendly burials that eliminate toxic chemicals and reduce the consumption of wood and metals commonly part of funerals. Advocates point to the enormous amount of materials that get buried in the earth as reasons why this new method makes sense.
According to Hillhouse, the United States each year buries the following in cemeteries: 827,060 gallons of embalming fluid; 90,272 tons of steel for caskets and vaults; 2,700 tons of copper and bronze for lining caskets; 30,000,000 board feet of wood for caskets; and 1.6 million tons of concrete for burial vaults.
The alternative involves skipping the embalming process and using coffins that more easily decompose in the ground.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
Natural Burial Is a Gentler Way to Leave (by Anne Dilenschneider, Huffington Post)
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