Opportunities in Green Burials
by Mortuary Transport Expert ~ April 27th, 2008. Filed under: Body Business, Business Development, Business Ideas, Mortuary Marketing.As this article states, green burials are not new, as the Jewish faith has been practicing this burial method all along for religious reasons. What is new is the non-Jewish community and the funeral industry as a whole seeing this as a viable option instead of traditional embalming and a sealed casket.
Fernwood in Mill Valley has been offering green burials for a few years now, and I actually did a few of their green burial removals while I worked for them. Some of them were Zen Buddhist ceremonies, and some were just families wanting a natural non-chemical way of burying their loved ones.
Fernwood actually places a GPS chip inside the shroud, then they bury them in a natural landscape with no headstone. The visiting family is then given a device to find the exact location of their loved one when they come to visit.
Since they can be buried vertically, it saves land space for the cemetery, and it reduces the overall cost for the family, even if money is no concern, as it is much of the time in Marin county.
The green movement has come to the funeral industry.
Funeral directors say green burials have begun to catch on as more people opt to forego traditional cremation or embalming techniques.
Surprising to many people, those traditional techniques aren’t required in most states. Some people are skipping the metal caskets, burial vaults and embalming fluids that, they say, unnecessarily fill the land with toxins and waste limited material resources.
Green burials have become more than the oddity they were 20 years ago when the first practice was established 20 years ago in western South Carolina.
Of course, Fernwood still offers cremation which costs even less and has gotten very popular. The point I’m wanting to bring across is that as a removal service, being aware of the options people have allows for opportunity to serve in more than just the traditional capacity.
Since there is no legal requirement for a family to use a funeral home for burial services, some families are opting to make their own arrangements, from transportation to death certificate filing to disposition. Of course, I don’t think you can go down to the local crematory and have someone cremated outside of the funeral industry, but green burial is a self care alternative, whether you build your own pine coffin, or choose to go super natural with just a linen shroud.
The pioneer in the green cemetery movement was Billy Campbell, who opened the first conservation burial ground in the United States, on 38 acres in South Carolina.
Campbell came up with the idea after his father’s death and burial in a historic cemetery behind the family’s Methodist church.
“With what we spent on the funeral, I could have bought five or 10 acres and created a more permanent memorial to him,” Campbell said.
Campbell’s conservation burial ground now is referred to as a stunningly beautiful stretch of woods, grassland and lush creek beds where people are buried with the simplicity of centuries past and where the proceeds go toward preserving and restoring the land.
Bart Yost, president of Rumsey-Yost Funeral Home 601 Ind., said green burials are not new. Another term for them is “direct” burials, and they are found across the nation in countryside or private cemeteries where people were not embalmed, were dressed in a favorite outfit or suit, and placed into what might have been a homemade, wooden casket.
