Science News: ‘Green’ burials are slowly gaining ground among environmentalists
Despite “green” burials becoming increasingly available in North America, some older eco-conscious adults remain unaware of the option when planning for their deaths, a small study hints.
Green burials do not use concrete vaults, embalm bodies or use pesticides or fertilizers at gravesites. Bodies are buried in a biodegradable container like a pinewood or wicker casket, or a cotton or silk shroud. Proponents of the small but growing trend argue it is more environmentally friendly and in line with how burials were done before the invention of the modern funeral home industry.
But when researchers asked 20 residents of Lawrence, Kan., over the age of 60 who identify as environmentalists if they had considered green burial, most hadn’t heard of the practice. That’s despite the fact that green burial had been available in Lawrence for nearly a decade at the time. More than half of the survey participants planned on cremation, because they viewed it as the eco-friendliest option, the team reported online January 26 in Mortality.
In 2008, Lawrence became the first U.S. city to allow green burials in a publicly owned cemetery. Several years later, at a meeting of an interfaith ecological community organization in the city, sociologist Paul Stock of the University of Kansas in Lawrence and his colleague Mary Kate Dennis noticed that most of the attendees were older adults. These people “live and breathe their environmentalism,” says Dennis, now a social work researcher at the University of Manitoba in Canada. “We were curious if it followed them all the way through to their burials.”
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