Editor’s Word: This text is a reprint. It was initially printed April 28, 2018.
Most of you studying this text proper now in all probability do your greatest to reside a inexperienced and eco-friendly way of life. You seemingly purchase native, natural and regenerative meals when doable and use chemical-free cosmetics, private care merchandise and family cleaners. You could even recycle and drive an electrical automobile. These actions are commendable and bode properly for our planet’s future.
However what about your burial? Typical burials (together with cremation) are characterised by ground- and water-polluting chemical compounds, man-made greenhouse fuel emissions and energy-intensive practices together with the huge deforestation to reap wooden for making caskets.
The featured movie, “Eco-Loss of life Takeover: Altering the Funeral Trade,” reveals simply how taxing the “funeral industrial complicated” is on our surroundings and why we must always think about eco-friendlier options resembling inexperienced or pure burials.
In Western tradition, the idea of dying is slightly taboo. Although an inevitable destiny for all of us, dying itself is never mentioned, not to mention the practices and cultural traditions that comply with the passing of a cherished one. This could possibly be why you’ve by no means heard of or thought concerning the environmentally damaging processes that happen with standard burials in America.
The movie was made by The Order of the Good Loss of life, a company based by mortician and funeral house owner Caitlin Doughty. Doughty, an advocate for inexperienced burials, is the writer of two books, “Smoke Will get in Your Eyes: And Different Classes from the Crematory”1 and “From Right here to Eternity: Touring the World to Discover the Good Loss of life.”2
Embalming Our Useless With Formaldehyde
The movie begins out speaking about what occurs to our corpse after we die — a squeamish-like subject unfit for these with a weak abdomen, however an vital (and related) topic nonetheless. Naturally, our our bodies decay after we die. It’s inevitable. But, resulting from our cultural traditions, the funeral business goes to nice lengths to delay this pure course of, pumping the circulatory system and physique cavity with a carcinogenic cocktail of preservative chemical compounds referred to as embalming fluid.
The primary ingredient in embalming fluid is formaldehyde,3 a hazardous substance linked to most cancers and irritation of the eyes, nostril and throat.
Formaldehyde was found in 1867 by chemist August Wilhelm von Hofmann.4 The chemical changed the usage of arsenic within the twentieth century and have become the first ingredient for embalming corpses. Although extremely poisonous to people, formaldehyde is the most well-liked chemical preservative amongst embalmers resulting from its effectiveness.
Debbie Dodge, president of the Dodge Firm in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which markets embalming fluid to funeral houses, advised The New York Occasions,5 “Formaldehyde is the proper product for fixation and short-term preservation. Formaldehyde will agency up the physique tissue greater than any of the nonformaldehyde merchandise on the market.”
Formaldehyde publicity within the office is commonest amongst embalmers, dentists, pathologists, veterinarians and people working within the clothes business or furnishings factories.
For embalmers, one of many principal routes of publicity is inhalation, that means efficient air flow is vital to defending the well being of embalmers. Formaldehyde ranges throughout embalming can attain as much as 9 components per million (ppm); 0.75 ppm is the Occupational Security and Well being Administration’s (OSHA) most permissible stage.6
Delaying the Inevitable
Within the U.S., 800,000 gallons of formaldehyde is dumped into the soil every year. How did we get to a spot of dumping such huge quantities of chemical compounds into the Earth to protect a physique that’s nonetheless going to decompose? The method of embalming was first developed within the late 1800s as a method to protect the physique for scientific examine. It later turned widespread within the funeral business as demand elevated to show the physique of the deceased.
The follow grew extra widespread through the Civil Struggle as embalming was used to protect the our bodies of deceased army males — a few of whom traveled nice distances by prepare or horse and buggy — to return dwelling for his or her burials. Makes an attempt to protect the physique don’t cease with embalming.
People are positioned in a contemporary casket often created from wooden, metallic or a mixture of each. The casket is then positioned inside a burial vault or grave liner designed to forestall the Earth from sinking in across the grave — in different phrases, a casket to your casket.
This course of is just not solely expensive (averaging $9,000 to $11,000 per funeral within the U.S.), but additionally takes a toll on the setting. Every year, an estimated 4 million acres of forests are cleared to make nondegradable wood caskets along with 115 million tons of metal and a couple of.3 billion tons of concrete.7
All of that is finished in an effort to delay a course of that’s inevitable — pure decomposition. Apparently, the U.S. and Canada are the one nations the place embalming is extensively practiced.
Crematories: Raining Formaldehyde
By now you could be questioning about cremation. It cuts again on numerous the assets required by a traditional burial, so isn’t it extra eco-friendly? Sure and no, says Doughty, including that direct cremation or cremation finished with out visitation or embalming is less expensive and has its eco-friendly perks, i.e., no embalming and no casket. However the place there’s a crematory, there’s hearth, and the place there’s hearth, there’s smoke, she says, including:
“Within the case of a crematory, that smoke can include numerous dangerous substances together with carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, hydrochloric acid, sulphur dioxide, dioxin and carcinogens polychlorinated dibenzodioxins and polychlorinated dibenzofurans.”
One other well being and environmental concern linked to crematories is the mercury vapor dispersed into the air from a corpse with amalgam dental fillings. The chemical air pollution is even worse with corpses embalmed with formaldehyde. Just like mercury, vaporized formaldehyde stays suspended within the ambiance till it bonds with water and rains again down on the Earth. Clearly, there have to be higher methods to bury our useless.
Measures are being taken to make cremation much less damaging on our surroundings. These embrace air pollution filters, which cut back air air pollution however don’t eradicate it. Some crematories are reusing the huge quantity of vitality required to cremate our bodies to warmth houses, public buildings and even swimming swimming pools. However because the movie notes, it’s nonetheless “placing a Band-Help on an inherently flawed course of.”
Inexperienced Options to Typical Burials
So, what could be finished to make the traditions and processes surrounding dying extra eco-friendly and fewer poisonous? The answer might lie in a course of referred to as alkaline hydrolysis, additionally known as aquamation, water cremation or flameless cremation. For many years, alkaline hydrolysis has been utilized in medical faculties and for livestock and pets. It makes use of primarily water to speed up the pure decomposition technique of a corpse, dissolving the tissue and decreasing it to delicate bone fragments.
That is completed by putting a corpse, generally wearing a biodegradable shroud, right into a pressurized metal container full of 95% water and 5% potassium. Over a two- to three-hour interval, the alkaline stress and heated options flow into across the corpse, mimicking the chemical decomposition course of the physique undergoes when buried.
The remaining bone fragments are pulverized and given to family members, whereas the liquid broth left behind — a neutralized combination of amino acids, peptides, sugars and salts — can both be repurposed into fertilizer or safely discarded.
Aquamation Versus Flame-Based mostly Cremation
In comparison with cremation, aquamation reduces the carbon footprint by greater than 75%, whereas using one-eighth the quantity of vitality, in line with the Funeral Shoppers Alliance. With aquamation, mercury vapors are contained and recycled as an alternative of vaporized.8
Additionally, as a result of corpses aren’t being incinerated at such excessive warmth — upward of 1,800 levels Fahrenheit — aquamation or flameless cremation leads to fewer greenhouse fuel and carbon dioxide emissions, rendering chemical emissions virtually nonexistent, says Doughty.
However what about all of the water used for aquamation? The method doesn’t require as a lot as you may suppose. The quantity of water used to scale back the physique to delicate tissue and flush out the alkaline hydrolysis machine is equal to lower than three days’ value of water utilized by the common American, in line with the movie. Is aquamation the way forward for physique disposal? Possibly. However it has to clear the authorized hurdle first.
Aquamation or flameless cremation is presently authorized in solely 14 states, together with California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont and Wyoming. And, whereas authorized in these states, alkaline hydrolysis is just permitted for the disposal of human stays in 4 states, that means the others permit it for pets solely.9
Alkaline Hydrolysis: The Subsequent Step in Loss of life Know-how?
So, what’s the case in opposition to aquamation? To place it plainly, some individuals are disgusted or unnerved by the concept of dissolving themselves or their family members’ physique in an alkaline hydrolysis machine and flushing the remnants down the drain. Some might discover it disrespectful to the useless. Nevertheless, as Doughty factors out, water cremation appears far much less violent than burning a corpse in an incinerator.
Thinker and various funeral advocate Phil Olson agrees, telling The Atlantic, “Burning grandma in hearth appears to be violent. In distinction, inexperienced cremation is ‘placing grandma in a heat tub.’” Alkaline hydrolysis isn’t good. However it appears to be cheaper and fewer damaging to the setting.
Pure Burials: Letting Nature Do Its Factor
Different inexperienced burial options embrace pure burials. Pure or inexperienced burials are the only solution to put a corpse within the earth and let nature take over with little to no environmental influence, in line with the movie. That is achieved by putting a corpse, both wrapped in a biodegradable shroud made from cotton or unbleached bamboo, right into a casket made from biodegradable supplies resembling seagrass or willow.
The casket is then positioned in a shallow grave measuring 3 to 4 toes deep. As soon as buried, nature takes over, permitting micro organism and bugs within the soil to naturally break down the physique and casket over time. Can pure burials result in water and soil air pollution? Not going, says Doughty.
A examine printed by the Pan American Journal of Public Well being discovered that pathogens don’t survive very lengthy in a useless physique or the soil round it as a result of a corpse buried in a shallow grave is uncovered to oxygen extra shortly, which accelerates the decomposition course of.10
Throughout decomposition, the physique might warmth as much as over 100 levels Fahrenheit, killing most, if not all, pathogens current at dying. Soil and water contamination has been noticed, nonetheless, in standard cemeteries on account of the poisonous chemical compounds used within the embalming course of.11 Probably the most important distinction between a traditional burial and a pure or inexperienced burial is the influence it has on our surroundings.
There are methods to make standard burials greener with strategies resembling eco-friendly embalming and Earth-friendly caskets, but it surely’s all an try to make a damaging course of somewhat bit higher, says Doughty. Extra individuals are opening their minds to greener options relating to dying. For instance, the Bradshaw Celebration of Life Middle in Minnesota experiences that when given the selection, 80% of individuals choose a inexperienced cremation.12
For those who actually give it some thought, inexperienced burials are the last word solution to give again to the Earth, which has supported us our whole lives, says Doughty, including: “You eat crops and animals in life, and in dying, they get to eat you.” In different phrases, with a inexperienced burial, the circle of life comes full circle at dying.
