Home / The LightAtTheEnd.com Podcast / Exploring Green Burial: Eco-Friendly End-of-Life Options

Exploring Green Burial: Eco-Friendly End-of-Life Options

Watch this LightAtTheEnd.com Podcast episode and subscribe to the LightAtTheEnd.com channel on YouTube:

Listen to this LightAtTheEnd.com Podcast episode by clicking the Play button below, or find us on your favorite Podcast platform, including Apple, Amazon, and Spotify (some are still being added!)

Summary

In our modern world, the choices we make regarding our end-of-life plans are as varied and significant as those made during our lives. Today, an increasing number of individuals are considering green burial and other eco-friendly funeral alternatives to ensure their final decision reflects their environmental values. In a recent podcast episode of the LightAtTheEnd.com podcast, hosted by Kevin Berk, this insightful topic was explored with guests Emily Miller and Alexis Rebane, who are experts in eco-friendly end-of-life options.

What is Green Burial?

Emily Miller, founder of the Colorado Burial Preserve, clarifies that green or natural burial is distinct from conventional burial methods. By allowing every part of the burial process, from the casket to the body itself, to be biodegradable, these methods minimize the ecological footprint. Body preparation avoids embalming, thus reducing chemical exposure to earth. The overarching goal of green burial is reintegrating the body with the earth naturally, facilitating a more connected and sustainable farewell.

The Story behind Colorado Burial Preserve

Miller’s journey into green burials began during her mortuary studies, where she first learned about natural burial and felt an emotional pull towards it. Her own venture, the Colorado Burial Preserve, arose from a recognition of the lack of green burial options in Colorado, and today it operates with a mission of native habitat restoration.

Understanding Green Burial Process

The podcast guests walked listeners through the green burial process. From optional pre-mortuary body care to the choice between a shroud or biodegradable container for burial, the emphasis is on participation and personalization. Graves are three to four feet deep, aiding natural decay processes, and families are encouraged to participate in the burial ceremony. Additionally, the preserve plants over 30 native species around the grave site, contributing to environmental restoration.

Eco-friendly Burial Containers

Alexis Rebane shared her passion for weaving willow caskets and urns, highlighting the integration of artisanal craftsmanship with natural materials. Witnessing the entire life cycle of these materials, from growth to creation to eventual decomposition, she describes as both fun and fulfilling, serving as a unique send-off for loved ones.

Alternatives to Conventional Burial

For those who might not opt for conventional burial, options like natural burial of cremated remains, water cremation, and body composting provide environmentally friendly choices. These alternatives align with the conservation missions of places like the Colorado Burial Preserve while maintaining respect for personal and ecological values.

Rising Interest in Green Burial

Miller and Rebane discuss the growing popularity of green burial, attributing it to the dissatisfaction with the conventional funeral industry and desire for more meaningful and environmentally considerate farewells. Despite challenges and misconceptions, the duo emphasize the importance of educating the public on these options.

Addressing Common Misconceptions

A significant misconception around green burial is its legality and feasibility. Yet, as both Emily and Alexis explained, green burial is available in many places, and people are often surprised to learn about their options. They urged increased consumer interest and inquiries, which could lead more cemeteries to accommodate green burial practices.

Planning and Personalizing End-of-Life Arrangements

Planning ahead is crucial. Alexis highlights that determining your preferences and documenting them reduces emotional strain on family members during times of distress. Moreover, pre-planning can secure current pricing and ensure chosen arrangements are honored.

Conclusion and Contact Information

As Kevin Berk wrapped up the podcast, the importance of discussions like these was underscored, shining light on the options available for those wishing to make environmentally conscious decisions posthumously. For more information on green burials and unique burial containers, Alexis Rebane can be contacted via GuardianFoxArts.com, and Emily Miller can be reached through ColoradoBurialPreserve.com.

Green burials are more than just an eco-friendly choice – they represent a quieter, simpler return to nature, fitting the rhythm of life in a way that aligns with many people’s final wishes. As awareness grows, so too do opportunities for participating in this gentle and earth-friendly farewell to life.

FULL TRANSCRIPTION:

“Back to Nature: Green Burial and Eco-Friendly Alternatives” (Dec 3, 2024)

Kevin Berk: Thank you for joining us on the LightAtTheEnd.com podcast. LightAtTheEnd.com is a resource for those who want to learn more about end of life topics, but don’t know where to start. I’m Kevin Berk, and I’m joined today by Emily Miller, founder of the Colorado Burial Preserve and on the board of the Green Burial Council, as well as Alexis Rebane, end of life specialist at Guardian Fox Arts, who is also my guest co host for today as we talk about green burial and eco- friendly options. Good morning, both of you – thanks for joining!

Alexis Rebane: Good morning!

What is Green Burial?

Kevin Berk: Emily, to start with, what is a green burial and how does it differ from, I think you’ve referred to it as something other than “traditional burial”…?

Alexis Rebane: Conventional.

Kevin Berk: Conventional, there you go…

Emily: Yeah, so I say natural burial and green burial a little bit interchangeably. because people might choose that type of burial for different reasons, but it is a separation from the traditions or conventions of more recent generations. Because as opposed to a big metal casket, a concrete outer burial container, everything in a natural burial is intended to biodegrade and go back to the earth. and this will include the care of the body, which would be done with no embalming. So that no, chemical reason is gonna prevent the natural processes of, of reintegration into the soil. And so people are choosing this out of environmental concerns. It would certainly lower the footprint of emissions and virgin material needed for someone’s final disposition. But then it’s also creating a much more, to reuse the word, natural experience of saying goodbye. You have this option to participate in the rituals of it, and the entire burial or funeral can take place in this unique, natural, wild environment, so it really changes the whole aesthetics of the final goodbye, as well.

The Story of Colorado Burial Preserve

Kevin Berk: So what was the story of the Colorado Burial Preserve? How did it get its start? I mean, you’ve been in the, uh, in the industry for what, 10 or 12 years now?

Emily: That’s right, yeah. My background is funeral directing in the conventional industry so I went to mortuary college and was studying all of the options that anyone could choose for their final wishes when I discovered natural burial as a possibility. I hadn’t even heard of it before that. And I had an immediate emotional reaction to the idea of a final resting place in nature, that it would be a wild environment, not something really man-made and manicured. And so then I went into this conventional cemetery and funeral career with a soft spot for the folks who might choose a natural burial, kind of my secret favorite. And later when I was working here in Colorado, a family asked me for that type of funeral, and I was so excited to do the research for them and find out sort of the most beautiful alpine meadow where we could naturally bury their father. And I was disappointed in what Colorado had for options around, green burial grounds, conservation burial projects. So I sort of perceived that as, like, a hole in the marketplace, for what our options even are here, and was motivated to found the Colorado Burial Preserve. We’re the first cemetery in the state to have a native habitat restoration mission.

So we’re the only cemetery dedicated to being as green as we can, and that’s sort of, unique in the market here, and also I think answering some of the concerns that people are starting to have about, “what are the impacts” or why are they making these choices around their end of life wishes?

Kevin Berk: Interesting.

Green Burial Council and Certification

Kevin Berk: So when did you, get involved with the, the Green Burial Council? Was that part and parcel with, with starting up the Colorado Burial Preserve?

Emily: Yes, my company was founded in 2020 and I wanted to align with the Green Burial Council because being a new cemetery is sort of an unusual thing in our culture, sort of an unusual thing anywhere. And, the GBC offers a credential for green cemeteries to sort of say, yes, we’re upholding all of the best practices, both for cemetery management and for being kind to the environment. So I sought that external certification right away as just something I wanted as a baseline, for my product at the burial preserve. But then because I do have this background in funeral service, the GBC certifies cemeteries and funeral homes, there was an opportunity for me to start volunteering in the role of being a liaison to the funeral homes and sort of my old career hat while being a certified member in, in my current incarnation. So I ended up joining the board about a year or two after I, sought certification for my company in the first place.

Kevin Berk: Oh, excellent. And they operate nationwide?

Emily: That’s right. We certify funeral homes, cemeteries, and burial products such as caskets, shrouds, and biodegradable urns, and we do that in all over the U S and Canada.

Benefits and Drawbacks of Green Burial

Kevin Berk: It sounds like there are a lot of tangible benefits to green burial. Are there any drawbacks?

Alexis Rebane: I would say the piece that people think is a drawback is taking up space, and I would argue that, especially in an area like the preserve, where there is a conservation mission and there is wildlife rehabitating, that somebody to choose to be buried naturally is taking up space that will not be developed into something that is worse for the environment.

So choosing a natural burial in a place like the preserve offers all sorts of people, whether they have loved ones buried there or not, the opportunity to come be in a wild space.

Emily: To add on to that, I think that across our culture a lot of people have kind of an aversion to cemeteries. and therefore are choosing cremation to think like, “wow, you know, that doesn’t seem like a smart use of space to me. I don’t like the way it’s manicured and concrete like that. I better ought to choose cremation.” And I think that’s a misconception around what the ecological costs of a cremation might be. So with cremation, you have this question of, “well, what’s going to happen to the ashes afterwards?” And if you just think of it as a, “well, I don’t need to think of a cemetery because I chose cremation”, sort of missing a big piece of that conversation about what’s going to happen in the future.

And just to build on what Alexis said about the uses of the space, to, create and hold a wild space is, is beneficial to the people who visit it, but it’s also beneficial to the people who don’t visit it because with native habitat, particularly in grasslands, but also in forests, we have an ability to sequester carbon year over year, you know.

We plant native species once someone’s buried and that starts the clock on how much good it can do for uh, climate and environment, but then also for biodiversity. When you plant native plants, you’re creating resources for, the pollinators and, and other wildlife who desperately need these wild spaces to continue, uh, to, complete their life cycles. So even if a person never visits a restoration habitat, the fact that people are working on preserving wild spaces and protecting biodiversity helps all of us, and the fact that it can also be used for end of life needs, it doesn’t do a lot of damage to that project. In fact, you know, when we are burying a person in this healthy, natural way, we can enrich the soil, improve the quality of habitat by adding in all the organic material and the natural processes that are going to happen with the body and create this beneficial environmental effect that’s only going to build over time.

Alexis Rebane: In addition to the carbon sequestration that happens due to burying the body instead of cremating it, there is also less use of carbon when it comes to the resources used to create the burial container, as well as the movement of the body from place to place, not to mention the off-gassing from flame cremation as well.

Kevin Berk: That’s so fascinating. Those, those are things that I hadn’t considered.

The Green Burial Process

Kevin Berk: And I also, Emily, you just mentioned that,that there are things that are planted at the point that a person’s buried, which I hadn’t considered.

Can you take me through the entire process from start to finish,what the options are for the final disposition whensomebody dies.

Emily: Sure, I’m a Funeral Director so that’s where I’ll start – the place where this person has died., It’s not important to me that they come into the care of the funeral home right away, especially if they’ve died at home. We have a lot of opportunity there for the loved ones to spend time with the body, to participate in the washing or dressing. Of course, in a natural burial we would use only biodegradable garments and/or shrouds. But whenever the mortuary might step in, you know, we still have a lot of options for how much time the loved ones want to spend with that person, and how involved they want to be in seeing them and caring for them still between the death and the funeral.

In that mortuary environment, we would use refrigeration instead of embalming. The funeral home can provide some of this care in regards to washing and making them presentable in the case that the family doesn’t want to be the agent of that, be the one to do it all.

We still have a lot of flexibility about when to schedule the burial. It seems like any more, these funerals are scheduled around people’s children’s travel, and work and school schedules more than, you know, either a religious reason or practical rush to get the person in the ground.

So even though we don’t have embalming from the funeral home, the use of refrigeration is going to give us some good flexibility about when we’re going to have the burial and whether or not there’s going to be any other types of funeral or other services in the meantime, you know. Some folks are going to still have viewings and religious services. Others might, you know, the final resting place burial might be the first funeral event, you know, followed by something indoors, or with food, or later in the year to commemorate an anniversary, et cetera. So we still have a lot of options around that. At the cemetery of the preserve is managed in a different way, but we follow all the sort of regular laws and regulations that you might expect from a cemetery. If you’ve ever been in the position to make those arrangements, so the family has a choice. In my case as to whether to select the plot of their choosing or allow us to assign the plot that might benefit the most from our restoration efforts after the burial. The grave is smaller than one might expect at a conventional cemetery. The depth, we’re only looking for between three to four feet. And the reason for that is we still want oxygen to be able to penetrate to those depths and participate in the chemical biological processes that take place with breaking down the body. So, this depth of three to four feet, it is shallow enough that the oxygen can still reach, that in the future the plant roots might be able to get down and take advantage of those nutrients. But then this depth is deep enough that we’re going to create a good size barrier of soil over top, and that’s what’s going to prevent any disturbances from wildlife, et cetera.

The person can be buried in a biodegradable container or a shroud. So if it’s a shroud, this is just a fabric wrapping and it would be linen, cotton, silk, hemp, something, you know, it cannot be polyester, right? It has to be a natural fiber that’s biodegradable. And if it’s a casket or container, this could be something as grand as a wooden box, a plain, unfinished wood casket. And then there are also containers that are, sort of, less substantial than that, more renewable than that, these could be woven from wicker, bamboo, reclaimed materials.

Cardboard is sometimes used. It has to be sturdy enough to bear the person to the final resting place, to carry them. But then, as I said, be made of materials that aren’t going to put up a fight they’re not going to resist the natural processes of the soil. So then this hole we’re digging is, I’ll take the height and width of the person, or the length and width of the container – should it be a shroud or a container – and we make just the, smallest hole that we can. We’re trying to limit the disturbance with the grave digging so that we only remove and disturb as much soil as was strictly necessary.

The burial service itself can be a lot of different things. You know, as a funeral director, I love to involve the guests to whatever extent they want to, including pallbearing, lowering the person by hand with straps and sort of the traditional way, re-covering the grave with the earth is an important part of the, the experience of being out there, the, the, what it means to bury your loved one. So I always offer them the chance to be involved with the covering, the closing of the grave, as well.

We include additional organic material aside from what we’re burying, of the person in the container. As we cover the grave, we will include straw, mulch, seasonal plants that have been cut for a variety of reasons, flowers… The idea is that we are increasing the percentage of organic material in the soil as we cover the grave to give the native plant restoration project its best chance of thriving and taking hold In the burial ground. So as the grave is covered, we’re planting over 30 different native species. It’s a pinyon-juniper woodland in a transition to a short grass prairie, that’s what my ecosystem is. So what we’ve done is work with an ecologist to identify what would be the most beneficial native seeds that we could plant in this final resting place We’re saying, “of course it’s up to mother nature, but we’re going to do our best that you could come back next spring and see this place thriving and, and, you know, growing because of the gift we’ve made to the soil here”, and that these plants would firstly establish well, and then secondly, be beneficial to the future of the environment on the site.

They can have a headstone. We allow a headstone when it’s rough shaped to sort of blend with the natural environment. There’s no concrete base to that. It just sits under its own weight, or in some cases, we have biodegradable markings for the grave, like a carved piece of wood, which will last, you know, not perpetually, but for a very long time, for the amount of time that that family kind of needs it to last.

So, yeah, the goal is to create everything the community needs for a cemetery, meaning they can gather and have this ritual together. They can have a place to memorialize those names and dates, they can come back and visit it as needed, and at the same time, we’re creating everything the community and the planet might want for a nature preserve.

So we’re protecting it from future development, yeah, doing our best to manage it. In this, light footprint, but beneficial way. And, uh, yeah, create a space that the community can visit to learn about the environment [even] if they’re not there to memorialize a loved one.

Kevin Berk:

Creating Eco-Friendly Burial Containers

Kevin Berk: I definitely want to get back to the the family visitation stuff later, but you were mentioning the burial containers and the materials used, and Alexis, I know that um, your most recent thing is that you have been working with willow to create burial containers, so I would love to talk about that, and just hear from you how that started and what the process is like for the creation of those.

Alexis Rebane: It’s so fun. It’s so funny to be talking about an aspect of relating to death and dying and say that it’s so fun, but I really love the creativity and the working with natural materials/components of putting together a willow casket or urn. I was living on the western slope of Colorado last year, on a willow field and the process of creating a willow casket starts from cutting down the willows from the year before and I stayed on this land and watched these willows grow for a year, or for a growing season, and then harvested them during the winter, cut them down by hand and then stored them at the preserve with Emily, in Emily’s care, we sorted them and bundled them and set them to dry.

Willows take… in Colorado, it’s pretty dry here, so not quite as long as other places, but four to six months to dry entirely. during that time, they shrink by 50%. And then once they are fully dry, they soak and become supple again, and then can be used to weave. So, if you’ve seen a wicker basket or wicker furniture, that is frequently made out of willow. And so, Emily and I took this willow and went to a workshop to make baskets, learned how to make baskets, and let the instructor know that we were interested in weaving caskets.

And he said, “well, you know, a casket is really just a very big basket”. And so we extrapolated from what we learned in that workshop and made a six foot casket, that has a slab of wood as its base and then willow as the basket around it and some natural fiber ropes that can be used as handles.

And it was a great experiment. I’ve made a few more pieces since then, another smaller casket, and some urns. It is just one of the most satisfying things to consider that this creative project, this artistic endeavor is coming from the land here, being woven by hand, being conceived of and created by us, by Emily and me, and then we’ll ultimately return to the land, ideally in the preserve or somebody else’s final resting place.

And that that life cycle takes place within our view, we can watch that happen. That’s a really fun process for me.

Kevin Berk: I love that. A nd there are no chemicals that are involved with the treating of the willow?

Alexis Rebane: Correct. Correct. They’re hand cut and then soaked in water when they’re rehydrated.

Kevin Berk: I saw a picture that, that was of the, the pet bed that you’d created as well, so it could be not only the pets, refuge at the point that it’s living, but then the final place that it, uh, once it dies, that it can also stay in.

Alexis Rebane: Yeah, I really like the idea a lot of weaving these baskets that can be caskets, but can be useful in the meantime. I think it’s really nice to have a piece like this in someone’s home where it is perhaps literally a coffee table to have coffee table conversations around. If you put a piece of glass over the top of it, it could be a coffee table or store blankets, that kind of thing.

But there is one smaller casket that I made that could be for a small human or perhaps [a larger animal like] a German shepherd. And it could be a bed in the meantime, and thentransition to being a burial container for a “fur family” member.

Emily: The other thing I like about these handmade caskets is in my past career in the funeral industry, there is a huge push from the employers and, and from the suppliers in the industry to create a sense of personalization for the consumer, especially as baby boomers become funeral purchasing age, this is the generation of individualists.

but then the funeral director hands you a catalog with the same 24 choices that the last family picked from, and what I find is that the personalization is fairly superficial.

It’s like, “well, was your grandparent into golf or did they like cooking?” And it’s like, “wow, those are both really generic things to say about my grandparents.” You know, everyone’s grandmother cooks. So when you have something that is truly handmade, one of a kind, locally grown, it is literally never going to be the same as anyone else’s funeral. And then to include this idea that you could be making memories with it, you know, it’s holding the, the memory quilts in the home, it’s present when we’re having holiday dinners around it. that is something just imbued with personalization in a way that, something mass produced and shipped overnight could almost never be.

Kevin Berk: Yeah, I love that.

Alternatives to Conventional Burial

Kevin Berk: if somebody doesn’t want to be buried but still wants to be on the preserve. it would be great to just talk about what the green alternatives are for people who maybe don’t want to be buried.

Emily: Sure. And I do know that the idea of kind of being in and of the soil is not everyone loves the aesthetics of that, and I think that’s one of the reasons that often people do choose cremation. So, I also perform natural burial of cremated remains. We can use a biodegradable urn, or also we can use a product called Let Your Love Grow, which is a soil amendment that corrects the chemistry of cremated remains. So, ashes from the crematory are not good for plants on their own – they’re salty and they’re high pH – but we can certainly take someone who’s been cremated and still enroll them into this native species restoration program, still give them the benefit of a final resting place.

When we take one of these measures like using a soil corrector or you can also bury cremated remains with a flat rock down in the hole over them. So that you kind of make this a protective barrier so that the grass roots don’t get in there and poison themselves. we also have a more environmentally friendly form of cremation. It’s called alkaline hydrolysis or water cremation. This is a system that breaks down the body by use of hot water and a basic chemistry like, it has lye in it to sort of dissolve the soft tissues of the body. It takes a lot,less of your utilities footprint than a conventional flame cremation. We have to heat the water, but aside from that, you don’t have the big fossil fuels costs that the heating up the flame crematory does. So, water cremation. a set of ashes that is pretty similar to flame cremation. Meaning, what’s left at the end of the process is the bones. Those are ground up and returned to the family.

So these could be buried or scattered or kept home in the same way. And then, in some places we also have body composting, which is also called natural reduction or natural organic reduction. And this is a little similar to a cremation in that your body has to go to a facility and it’s held within a chamber while the body’s broken down, but in this case, instead of using the chemical or flame action to break the body down, they use a biological system, which they add, natural materials, alfalfa, straw, different things to start a composting process. And when a person is naturally buried, we’re saying, okay, the soil is going to break them down and this could take months to years, depending on the climate. When we break them down in this natural way in the facility of, of natural reduction, it takes only weeks to months instead of months to years. So it’s similar to a cremation in that the facility will hand you back the output of this, Of this process. And then there’s this further question of, “well, then what to do with it”? The compost that results from a body composting, it’s very nourishing and life giving.

So, in contrast to like, you really don’t want to bring someone’s cremated remains home and plant a rosebush, because as I mentioned, the cremated remains themselves are not good for the plant. The body compost would be very good and life giving for that same bush.

So the body composting creates a good deal of material, it’s about one cubic yard, so it’s more than the mass of, of your body. But then, it creates all these interesting possibilities of what you might do with that soil, and indeed one option would be to inter it in the burial preserve and sort of join the Native Habitat Restoration Project with those nutrients.

Rising Interest in Green Burial

Kevin Berk: Alexis and I had been talking about whether green burial has been of on the rise, whether there’s a heightened interest for it it seems like we’re hearing a lot more about it.

What’s been your experience?

Emily: I believe that the conventional funeral is driving people away from funeral activities, and that natural burial is making the argument to say, “hey, actually, these rituals have always been an important part of humanity.” I think that, the funeral home and cemetery industry has made conventional burial very expensive and also a little confusing. For example, like, we say “ashes to ashes and dust to dust” at those funerals, but then we lock the person inside of metal, inside of concrete, and make sure that that will virtually never happen. And we, we take them out to the cemetery to say, “Hey, you know, burying your person is an important part of this”, but then at the cemetery, they cover all the exposed dirt with green plastic grass for fear that you might see dirt or experience nature.

Typically, just a generic, anyone’s funeral, might be this story of ” wow, I was in that house of worship that I don’t really agree or believe in anymore. Gosh, that minister didn’t really even seem to know my person. Oh, they looked a little strange after the embalming. And then we all went to this cemetery where, like, the crew was breathing down our necks waiting for us to leave, and we didn’t even get to see them really buried or participate in the process. And then the bill was almost $12,000!” It’s like, well, who would take that deal? And for me, I really think that that’s one of the reasons we’re seeing this. rise in direct cremations, meaning a cremation where there’s no other services, or you see in the obituary, “Oh, at Susie’s request, no services are being held at this time.” I don’t think that’s good for Susie’s family. That’s just because Susie went to a bunch of different funerals where her friend didn’t look like herself, and she hated knowing how much her neighbors spent on all that, and like, teaching people to dislike the whole topic of a funeral. And in contrast to all of that, I feel that natural burials are reintroducing an older, simpler, better way of doing it where the guests can have real intimacy with the person who’s passed away, and, they learn real lessons around, gosh, what it means to die and then rejoin the cycle that you can recontextualize the death and grief a little bit when you say, “wow, those are the actual plants and animals that are going to turn around and live because my friend died”

 That we have opportunities to re engage with death care, aside from the environmental benefits or the carbon emissions savings from that type of burial. it also is just a better, better funeral. And so that’s the reason I feel like we are seeing this renewed interest in natural burial. Certainly some of the people are just hardcore environmentalists and want to die as they’ve lived, but other people just never really loved cremation and didn’t really know that this was an option. And then, you know, as a guest perceiving this type of funeral, it’s like me when I first read about it in mortuary college, it’s like this light bulb moment, like, “wow, this makes so much more sense.”

Alexis Rebane: And there’s a piece of it also, I mean, you spoke a little bit, Emily, about the hardcore environmentalists who are doing this for that reason. And you also mentioned the person whose obituary states that they didn’t want a service. Could you talk a little bit about the demographic of people who just want to be “thrown in a ditch”?

Emily: I hear this all the time, “I just, I just told my family, expose me somewhere on the mountainside, and it seems like natural burial might be actually what I was talking about because it’s this idea that nothing would be wasted around caring for me because I’m gone. so, burial in the preserve, it’s going to cost a little bit more than throwing them wild in a ditch, until you start paying the fines for that anyway.

But it’s going to get around this problem of, “Oh, I don’t want any fuss. I don’t want anything wasted on me” because we can turn around and say, “no, we’re, we’re doing good. We’re giving this person’s body back to the earth. We’re not wasting the space, but we’re holding the space. And if you wanted truly nothing, staying within what’s legal, natural burial is as close as we can get to, to being “thrown in a ditch” in Colorado. On the coast, we might also suggest burial at sea, but, yeah, for thistype of person who thinks they want nothing around their final needs, we can turn nothing into actually something beneficial.

Kevin Berk: So, you’ve mentioned, price a couple of times is having a green burial any more or less expensive than a, than a conventional burial?

Emily: It’s gonna typically fall somewhere in-between the whole costs of a conventional burial and what you might have gotten for a minimum cremation. Green or natural burial will almost always have two costs involved: one for the cemetery and the final resting place, and another for the associated services from the funeral home or the mortuary.

In Colorado, you don’t have to use a funeral home. You certainly can care for your own dead and transport them. But in practical terms, almost everyone is going to end up using a funeral home to file the death certificate, provide a little of that refrigeration and care for the loved one, and then transport them to the final resting place on the day of service.

So, because you had those two charges, one at the funeral side and one at the cemetery side, it would almost always be more than if you had a service that only took place on the mortuary, such as a cremation or a water cremation. Of course those services don’t include the final resting place.

So it’s not a complete answer to the question either, but natural burial is going to be a cost savings under a conventional burial because of all the things you didn’t have to buy, such as the outer burial container, the casket…as I said, I allow headstones, but they’re much more modest compared to the thousands you could spend on a monument at a conventional cemetery. The embalming, you would be saying “no, thank you” to that type of care as well. So just in the things that we’re saying “no, thank you” to, you could save many thousands of dollars. And I always like to point out too that we pay sales tax when we buy a casket, we pay sales tax when we’re forced to buy an outer burial container by the cemetery policies. So simply, saying no to those, as I said, it saves a great deal of money.

Kevin Berk: When you were taking us through the process, Emily, of what a family might encounter when they’re burying a loved one at the preserve, you mentioned that there are other materials that go into the grave, maybe some straw, some other organic materials… I wanted to also bring up the piece of this that is the participatory element of people being at the burial, and that one of the organic materials that somebody could put into the grave with their loved one is a picture printed on paper that will decompose or maybe rocks or other organic materials that are mementos or memorials or ways to honor their loved one.

Alexis Rebane: Do you want to talk any about the role that nature plays in offering this opportunity to participate as somebody going to a natural burial or a green burial? What are some of the things you’ve heard from people who have attended a green burial for the first time, perhaps?

Emily: Yeah, you know, uh, your first green burial seems to be a little of a transformative experience, the one, um, comment that I hear more than any from the guests is, “wow, this was so meaningful!”, or else they say, “I had no idea this was possible!” Uh,so we have a little of a geography challenge in natural burial that, you know, there’s only a limited number of sites around the country that have a program like this. So many people who have been to their friends and loved ones’ memorial services were never introduced to it as a possibility.

but then, above and beyond just the possibility of it. I think that, being in a place of nature and also being so close to the process as to be invited to participate in it, it’s a significant aesthetic difference from funerals you may have attended in the past at the funeral home or in a conventional cemetery, and people are finding it very eyeopening and surprising on how different it feels to say goodbye to someone in that environment than, one of these more manufactured places. For example, on the preserve, we have tree juniper trees in all stages of life. From just tiny sapling sprouts to ones that have lived to their full glory of size and life, and now are dying back or have died. And most cemeteries or any type of developer, the first thing you do when you get on a plot/parcel is to take out any of your dead trees.

Humans, we love to pull out dead trees. but these create an important resource of habitat and of chemical, biological enriching to the soil. And so as you tour the preserve, you see, “wow, this is something that has died”. And then down in the roots of it, you see, “wow, that is something beautiful, that is growing and blooming.” So, you know, death for us humans has always been a return to the earth. It is a completion of the cycle. but our medical/legal/funeral/health complex has has separated us from that kind of reality of living and dying, and you know, our dying takes place behind closed doors and facilities the same way with our other, medical events. And of course, some people live these urban lives where they’re not often exposed to these sort of lessons from nature anyway. And to be out there doing death and grieving, or dying and saying goodbye, in an environment where the role death plays in nature is just straight in front of your face. It can’t be avoided. for me, I think it’s very healing. and it really helps to contextualize other aspects of our lives on earth to remember that we are of, and from, and by nature, even when we live lives that would have us forget that fact.

Alexis Rebane: The other thing I think it’s important to note is Emily mentioned that there are not very many burial preserves or specifically green burial cemeteries. What is good to know, though, is that many cemeteries have a section that can be used for green burial, or they can make it as green as possible. In some places, they will waive requirements to have a cement vault over the top of the grave, and they’ll have that part of the cemetery be less managed, less manicured, less landscapes.

And, If you’re not sure about whether there’s an option in your area, please call the cemeteries and register your interest in having that section or a preserve or a green burial cemetery in your geography. I think that the more awareness there is within the industry that there’s interest from the people, the more we’ll see these changes happening all over the country.

Emily: It doesn’t even have to be a separate section. I know of conventional cemeteries that will allow a natural burial in and amongst their conventional burials as well. You all should know that there’s a few reasons that most cemeteries require vaults. It’s almost never a legal requirement. The main practical reason for it is having a burial vault over your casket creates stability and flatness on the ground above. So this is literally in place so that they have uncomplicated lawn mowing when they go back in to do maintenance above the grave. Over anyone’s grave with no vault, you might expect someday, sooner or later, to find some sinking and settling of the grave area, which… it’s not a problem. Cemetery management could always peel back the sod, throw in a little extra earth to level that back out, and now you’re back to mowing the lawn the way you always did. But in the meantime, having that vault buried saves them that labor. their business models have grown up around the profit margin that they’re going to see from that vault and maybe a vault installation fee. The cemeteries are sort of loathe to give up on their requirement to have a vault, even though there’s no legal or public health reason to have it. It’s just like, they’re really used to having them, but they’re also losing market share to folks who are choosing cremation with scattering all the time and, you know, in some geographic areas, they’re losing it faster than others.

So, the cemeteries, as Alexis was saying, if they understood that we had this consumer need for burial spaces that didn’t require vaults or that allowed it with no caskets, that we could recover some of these folks that are choosing cremation, give them back a more holistic funeral, give them a final resting place where they can have these benefits of being able to visit and teach future generations, and all we had to do was kind of open our minds about what the project would look like, around settling and mowing. So I do feel that… we call it hybrid green burial when a cemetery allows to also have natural burials in their site.

So hybrid natural burial is an incredible opportunity to get these options in every zip code. Any cemetery could be offering natural burial. It’s just only a matter of telling them, look, this is what your constituents are asking for.

Common Misconceptions and Legalities

Kevin Berk: This is kind of a question for both of you, but, but I’ll start with you, Alexis, just in your role as an end of life specialist: when people are talking to you about their options are and what your opinions are, do you feel like there are common questions or concerns or misconceptions that come up around green alternatives? Fears that need to be allayed or things like that?

Alexis Rebane: I think that there are questions that come up all the time, and almost all of them have very clear answers that are reassuring and allow people to make different decisions. the number of times I have spoken to somebody who was very certain that they wanted to be cremated until we had a 4 minute conversation, and then they were converts.

And so, I think that the common, fears are around animal scavenging, which is not a very big concern, that’s just the depth of the grave that discourages that, the idea of taking up space in the ground is something that people list as a reason to be cremated. And it’s really interesting because frequently they’ll list that as “well, I want the environmentally friendly option, so I’m going to be cremated,” until find out that is the way that carbon is not sequestered. So, correct me if I’m wrong, Emily, but I think that flame cremation is second worst to conventional burial with embalming. And so people who believe that they are making an environmentally sound decision by being cremated are often very surprised to find that that’s one of the worst options.

The other thing that I hear from people is about wanting to become a tree or be buried in a mushroom suit, and while those are lovely concepts, as Emily mentioned earlier, the way to return a body to the soil is most easily accomplished by returning the body to the soil! And I’ll let Emily speak a little bit to those other options and why they’re maybe not as practical as they are, sort of, of shiny and exciting.

Emily: Yeah, I do practice planting native species over someone’s final resting place because I’m all for this idea that we would sort of come back as, or, or that the nutrients from our body would then become part and parcel of these, plants that are going to help protect our environment. But I think it’s very anthropocentric to imagine that, “oh, because I lived, I want to also become this tree”. You know, a healthy forest is way more organisms than only the tallest trees, and just because we sort of see ourselves as the biggest and the best of the animal kingdom doesn’t make a directcorrelation into we ought to all become the biggest and the best of the plant kingdom.

What we need is a whole ecosystem interconnected and working together. From the very smallest microbes up to the biggest of trees. And so that’s why we are, you know, when we consider the conditions of a natural burial and what type of restoration we’re going to do in the plot, we have to start on this microbial chemical improvement of the soil, and then on up through “what’s going to grow the first year, what’s going to grow the second year”, and what we want to create is a whole interlocking web of ecology and not just “one tree per grandfather”. And just to answer your previous question, Kevin, about these sort of misconceptions that we hear around our choices for, natural burial. I mean, for anyone’s, end of life disposition options. The biggest one I sometimes hear is, “oh, I had no idea that was legal”, in regards to natural burial. And I think people are so conditioned by what they might hear at the conventional funeral director’s office, or, or how many, conventional funerals they’ve been to, that they just went ahead and assumed that embalming was required by law. Or that everyone had to be, interred in a vault for some kind of public health or legal reason. And I think that the conventional cemeteries and funeral homes are, are just fine if you assume that. You know, they’re not teaching you the, the misinformation. But they are presenting these options as if it was a sure thing that it’s going to be required. and so a lot of people would assume that, “well, in my state, I’m sure that natural burial is not legal. Because I’ve never seen or heard of that happening” and in fact, people are buried without embalming all the time.

In Jewish and Muslim faiths, natural burial is the dominant form of disposition, meaning it’s only a shroud and there’s no embalming or it’s only a plain pine box and there’s no embalming. So this is happening in all 50 states and all around the world, all the time, anyway, those folks from religious communities just call it “burial.” And we don’t need special laws to be passed to allow for a greener way to go. We just need to be asking and maybe putting some pressure on the companies that offer these services.

Kevin Berk: I’m so glad you keep bringing that up. That’s one of the things with LightAtTheEnd.com that I am extremely sensitive to is how people can potentially be taken advantage of by the business practices, whether they’re unscrupulous you know, business owners or whether people just don’t know the right questions to ask or the, the limitations… One of the things that I talked to my cousin about when he lost his son very, um, suddenly, was he felt like at every turn, he felt like somebody was trying to take advantage of him in his time of need.

 there’s definitely a lot of potential for people to get pushed into a direction because they don’t know any better.

Alexis Rebane: People don’t know what they don’t know. Em’?

Emily: (Unfortunately…)

I going to say the same thing. There’s an education gap between, you know, what a consumer ought to know before being in that situation. And of course, we never know when people are lost in sudden circumstances all the time. And so there you are having done no advance self-education around what the options are, and you’re immediately in this, you know, terrible day of grief and mourning and being forced to make these big, decisions with an expert who knows all about this. And it’s their 12th one this week, but it’s your first one ever. So it’s a power imbalance when you’re sitting at that table and it’s made worse by a knowledge imbalance where people don’t tend to investigate these options until it’s their time to be making decisions about it.

Kevin Berk: Right.

Planning and Personalizing Your End-of-Life Arrangements

Alexis Rebane: And I would say that is, from my perspective as an end of life specialist, working with people on their advanced directives, having these thoughts before it’s time to make decisions and thinking through what you would want for yourself before anybody has to make these decisions for you is something that I really counsel people to do all the time.

If one of these options sounds like the right option for you as an individual, make sure that you write it down. Make sure that you tell the people who will be making these arrangements on your behalf, that this is what you want. It’s really a difficult thing for people to guess. And so having your wishes be really clear around what kind of body disposition you would like or not like is really, really important, and it takes the burden off of your loved ones when they are grieving, to know in advance what it is that you want to have happen with your body.

Emily: I’m glad too because that’s the time to make sure what you’re asking for is possible and legal too.

Alexis Rebane: And you can also pay for it in advance and lock in pricing, um, for the, the current pricing for services. What happens is that if you make arrangements in advance, pre planning, your money goes into an insurance account. And then the arrangements are paid for by that insurance policy upon your death, but a lot of different funeral homes and cemeteries will allow you to make arrangements at the current price and lock in, an inflation proof price, for your future needs.

so that’s this is something that you can do now and and guarantee it for yourself for the future.

Kevin Berk: Also great advice.

Emily: I think a lot of people assume that green burial because of, we call it green, that environmental friendliness is the top reason for picking it. But as we’ve sort of been talking about all along, it’s also a substantially different experience. It’s different what the guests see and hear and feel, it’s different the way the final resting place can be visited and used into the future.

So yes, it’s greener, it’s kinder on the environment, but I think it also is just a more, natural, basic human thing to do when there’s been a death. And so that’s why we’re seeing rise in popularity of it is that people are responding to it better. The fact that it’s good for the planet is, like, almost a side benefit. When after you consider the fact that it’s giving us better funerals, it’s giving us a way more traditional way of saying goodbye when you think of, you know, the way all of humanity would have done this across time and geography, almost everyone on earth would have been just buried in a simple final resting place, except for, you know, you have some cultures who, who would have practiced cremation and other things across time it is a return to a more simple way. It’s, It’s stepping away from some of these misconceptions that the conventional funeral and cemetery industry are telling us, and then almost rediscovering, just basic, real simple truths about what it means to, to live and die on earth.

Alexis Rebane: As far as people relating with their loved one after death and honoring and having ritual, I think that a natural burial really feeds that well because of all of the cycles that exist in nature. I think that people have really strong anniversary effects when it comes to losing somebody they love, that they might not even be aware of in their day to day life.

But by returning to a burial site, having this sense of place that is changing, growing, evolving around us and also returning us to experiences that we’ve had in the past so that we can revisit and heal and move forward, with these cycles incorporated into our understanding of what’s happening with our loved one.

Emily: One common misconception that I hear around natural burial is that we must have to do the burial within 24 or 48 hours after when the death has occurred, and I think most people don’t realize that we have a good amount of flexibility when we use the refrigeration in the mortuary, and in fact, we have in Colorado, we have a legal requirement to file the death certificate within 48 hours of the death,but there’s no rush when it comes to making the burial or making the cremation. So we have a lot of flexibility around making the plans for the final gathering, for the burial.

In fact, I’ve even been,part of arrangements for natural burial in the preserve where it was two to three weeks between when the person died and when we finally gathered to have the burial because, yeah, that refrigeration gives us a lot of… it takes the pressure off rushing out to have the burial.

It gives us the ability to plan what we might want to in terms of getting the loved ones to gather.

Alexis Rebane: And there’s the opportunity to gather within the home, with the use of dry ice and other cooling materials, depending on the climate that the person is in it. There can be several, days of celebration or holding space for this passed loved one, deceased loved one, in the home before even needing to go to the funeral home for refrigeration.

So there are, there are ways to make plans, even after the death has occurred without feeling like you’re having to rush into any decisions that you’re not sure about.

In addition to weaving willow caskets, I’ve woven some urns, and urns are much faster than caskets in terms of number of hours to weave. For example, this little willow urn, and this probably took me six hours? Six or eight hours to weave. And so that is something that could happen after somebody dies, before the need for cremated remains to go into it. However, the cycle of the willows and the weaving has to be taken into account. So currently I have a handful of different options for urns and a couple of different caskets and a burial tray.

Here’s another example of an urn that I would use for cremated remains for pets. I would include in this several silk bags, pouches that remains could be placed within. And so this could be an urn that would sit on the mantle piece, of all the beloved pets over the years, that kind of thing.

So some of these things I have already made, some could be made to order, but it would be dependent on having enough materials to put together a casket, that kind of thing.

Kevin Berk: Assuming you do have the materials, what’s a realistic turnaround time? I’m, I know that it probably varies widely depending on the size of the receptacle,

Alexis Rebane: So, the willows after, they’re, they’re stored dried, and so to weave with them, they need to be soaked for between four to eight days, and so if there were not any willows soaked, there would be that kind of a lead time, and then a full size casket takes somewhere between 30 and 50 hours.

Kevin Berk: Okay. Well, they’re lovely.

Emily: There’s kind of a running bottom line around, your own end of life arrangements where the more unique and individualized and specific you feel about them, the more it’s on you, your own responsibility to have those pieces in place before they’re needed. So this question about how long does it take to grow and soak willows is a great example. If that’s something really important to you, knowing that we might have to consider a whole growing season, and then the drying and soaking time, it might be time to start looking for your artisan or your artisanal products for this type of thing now, while you have the feelings about what you care about, not later, when your family’s feeling this sense of rush around making the decisions.

So, yeah, for your listeners who have heard something that sounds good to them, there’s no better time to start looking into it than now, while you have the ability to.

Alexis Rebane: And certainly one of these urns could be used as a basket, until it’s needed as an urn. So, there are ways that you can incorporate these pieces into your life?

Emily: Looked like a cookie jar to me.

Conclusion and Contact Information

Kevin Berk: Alexis, for… Hahaha… for those who are interested in the work that you do, is GuardianFoxArts.com the best place to connect with you?

Alexis Rebane: Absolutely. People can send me a message through my website, or my phone number and email are there. I also am on Instagram as @guardianfoxarts.

Kevin Berk: And then, Emily, uh, the best place to get in touch with you is through the ColoradoBurialPreserve.com website.

Emily: That’s right. Yep. We’re also on Facebook, ColoradoBurialPreserve.

Kevin Berk: Awesome. Thank you so much for shining a light on all this, uh, for me and for anybody who’s watching or listening.

Alexis Rebane: My pleasure. Thanks for having us.

Emily: it’s an important conversation to have. Happy to do it.

Kevin Berk: Thank you both so much.