Cemeteries discover market for green burial procedures
RHINEBECK, N.Y. — Last goodbyes are said in these woods with wildflowers placed on a shrouded body, or with the beloved wrapped in a favorite childhood blanket. Dirt shoveled back into the graves leaves behind slowly sinking mounds of earth on the forest floor, marked with stones.
“Green burials” like these at Rhinebeck Cemetery in New York’s Hudson Valley shun coffins, embalming fluid and concrete “vaults” so everything in the ground decomposes. It’s a movement that goes back more than a decade, but advocates say public attention has increased in recent years.
“I love the thing about just being wrapped up and going back to the ground,” said 59-year-old Gina Walker Fox, who purchased a plot. “And that seems to be a very easy way on the environment, and an easy way on the human body.”
Green burials turn back the clock to before the Civil War, when embalming caught on as a way to preserve soldiers who died far from home. Burial vaults, which keep graves from collapsing and lawns level for mowing, became more widespread after World War II.
Advocates argue it’s best to avoid introducing concrete vaults and potentially toxic embalming fluids into the ground. And unlike cremation, no fossil fuels are required to break down the body.
Of the thousands of cemeteries nationwide, maybe around 125 offer green burial, said Suzanne Kelly, Rhinebeck Cemetery committee chairwoman. Many create natural burial grounds near the neatly ordered markers of their traditional plots.
In Vermont, a law taking effect July 1 changes the minimum depth for burying bodies from 5 feet to 3 1/2 — a depth advocates say is conducive to decomposition.
Alabama last year changed a law that restricted casket sales to licensed funeral directors after a lawsuit from a woman who wanted to sell biodegradable caskets.
While state laws vary, green burial practices are legal across the nation, said Kate Kalanick of the Green Burial Council. The council says unembalmed bodies are safe for a viewing and do not pollute the soil.