Green Burials - Part 2

by Libby Pelham | More from this Blogger

28 Jan 2011 11:44 AM

Yesterday, I was talking about green burials and why, for whatever reason, it is an attractive option for many people.

Green burial sites aim to reduce the environmental impact and conserve the landscape. There is a Green Burial Council that sets standards for green cemeteries. Wikipedia lists Joe Sehee, the Executive Director of the council as a "leading advocate" in the green burial movement. Dr. Billy Campbell, who opened the first modern green cemetery in 1996 (Memorial Ecosystems in Westminster, SC), is also another pioneer in the green burial movement.

Tyler Cassity, who took a bankrupt cemetery in Hollywood and turned it into the popular (I am not kidding - people have been married there!) Hollywood Forever, opened the Fernwood Burial Ground in Mill Valley, Calif. in 2004. It is 32 acres of green burial land that has no tombstones. Instead, people can find their loved ones burial site via GPS, provided by Fernwood of course.

However, Cassity and Sehee, who was once the media rep for Fernwood, seem to have had a falling out as to what was really "green." This caused Sehee to establish the Green Burial Council and develop green burial standards.

If you want to learn more about green burial, later this year a green burial documentary titled "A Will for the Woods" will be released and many of those I've mentioned in this blog are featured in it.

With green burials, there certainly is low overhead - you don't have to buy a casket, vault, or pay for embalming. According to Tom Jokinen, author of "Curtains: Adventures of an Undertaking-in-Training," there isn't a problem with disease because these bodies are doing what they were meant to do - decompose naturally.

I originally intended for this blog to be two parts, but the more I researched, the more I felt compelled to write a third segment, so tomorrow, you will learn a little bit more about green burials.

Learn more about Libby Pelham

Libby Pelham is a web designer/freelance writer located in Memphis, TN. She has a beautiful little boy, Will, born in July of 2004.

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