Eco-Friendly Funerals

Dying is not something we like to think about but it’s inevitable. If you’ve tried to live an eco-friendly life you might also want to have a funeral in the most eco-friendly way as well. These days there are several options for eco-friendly funerals but let’s start first with the legal requirements when someone dies.

What to do when someone dies in the UK

1. Register the Death

In the UK you have to register the death within 5 days. (8 days in Scotland). You need a death certificate from a GP or a doctor in the hospital the person died in. Alternatively you’ll need permission from a coroner to register the death.

2. Arrange a Funeral

“There is no law that says you have to have a funeral, but the law does state that you must “dispose of the body of the person who has died by burial, cremation or any other means”” – Your Funeral Choice

3. Tell the Government about the death

The simplest way to do this is to use the Governments ‘Tell us Once‘ service, however you’ll need to do this within 28 days of the death. Using ‘Tell Us Once’ means all Government departments are notified of the death at the same time rather than you having to contact each department individually.

4. Deal with any benefits etc

You can check to see if you can get any bereavement benefits, or your own benefits might be affected by the death of someone close to you.

For full details of the legal requirements click here.

The thing that has always frustrated me is that life is expensive enough and you can’t even die for free. But that might not be as true as I thought it was. Depending on how organised you’ve been before your death you can seriously reduce the cost and the environmental impact of your burial.

Options for Funerals

• Traditional Cremation or Burial using a funeral director.
• Direct Cremation. You can have a cremation without having a memorial or funeral service. This is obviously cheaper than arranging both the cremation and a separate memorial service. The funeral director will return the ashes to the family within a few days of the cremation.
• DIY Funerals. The cheaper way to have a traditional style of funeral is to do it yourself. You can arrange transporting the body and the actual burial or cremation. Using a funeral director is not a legal requirement.
• Burial at Sea. Not common, but it can be done.
• DIY Burial. It sounds like it should be illegal to bury a body in your back garden, but it isn’t, unless you’re hiding a murder of course!
• Green Burial or Natural Burial at a woodland burial site.

Environmental Impact of Dying

Not So Eco-Friendly Funerals

Traditional Burials

Things to take into consideration when thinking about the environmental impact of burials.

• Is the body embalmed?
• What material was used for the coffin?
• Does the graveyard use pesticides and lots of water to keep it ‘neat and tidy’?

What is Embalming? “Embalming is the process of pumping a chemical cocktail of formaldehyde, phenol, methanol, and glycerin into the body through an artery to delay the body’s rate of decay. (…) more than 800,000 gallons of formaldehyde are put into the ground along with dead bodies every year in the US.” – Business Insider

Embalming is not a legal requirement and to be in any way eco-friendly it should be avoided as far as possible. (You will need to embalm to transport a body abroad).

The Coffin. Is the coffin made from a sustainable source of wood? (FSC certified). What are the fixtures and fittings made of? Bronze, copper?

Burying or burning a coffin, especially with an embalmed body, releases all sorts of toxic chemicals into the atmosphere and soil. If you’re being buried then the graveyard is likely to use pesticides to keep weeds away and use lots of water to keep the grass green. All these pesticides destroy biodiversity. It’s a real shame that most graveyards aren’t insect-friendly.

To have a far more eco-friendly burial avoid embalming, and choose a coffin that is made of a biodegradable material like bamboo or even paper which doesn’t have any metal fittings on it.

Cremations

Cremations are more eco-friendly than burials but are still not great for the environment. Carbon monoxide, fine soot, sulphur dioxide, heavy metals, and potentially mercury emissions from dental fillings are all released into the atmosphere.

You might think that the ashes will provide nutrients back into the soil, they don’t. Cremated ashes are sterile “Any bacteria or microscopic organisms that were present in the body are destroyed during the cremation process.”

Eco-Friendly Funerals

Burial at Sea

It was only while doing research for this article that I discovered that burials at sea are still a thing. For some reason I believed only people who died on a boat, or who were in the navy, could legally be ‘buried’ at sea, but in fact anyone can. You do however need to get yourself a license to bury someone at sea.

There are also certain restrictions attached.

• A doctor’s certificate is required to confirm the body has no infections or fever.
• The body cannot be embalmed and the clothing has to be lightweight and biodegradable.
• There are currently only 3 legal locations for sea burials but you can propose a new site.
• Make sure the body has an identification tag attached (in case the body drifts or is caught up in fishing nets!).
• Finally there are strict restrictions on the coffin you can use.

More info here.

DIY Burial

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve thought to myself that it’s ridiculous that we have to go through a funeral director and that you can’t just bury your loved one yourself. It turns out I was wrong. You can actually bury the body yourself and you can even bury a body in your own back garden. The most important consideration is how you would feel if you have to move house and leave your loved one behind. Unsurprisingly you do have to notify people of where the body is buried.

It doesn’t even have to be your own back garden, as long as you have permission from the landowner you can bury someone pretty much anywhere.

Making your DIY Burial Green

If you do decide on a DIY burial, make it as green as possible. When choosing a coffin, use biodegradable materials. If the body is clothed, use lightweight, undyed biodegradable clothing. The decomposition of the body is unlikely to have any effect on the water table, but to be safe use a burial site at least 10 metres away from any water. Legally you only need ’30 inches of soil between the surface of the ground and the upper side of the coffin’, however 4 foot down is probably better if the site is somewhere that could be disturbed.

The most important thing – “You need to make a register for the grave. This means that you will need a piece of paper with the name, address, date of birth, age, date and place of burial and the name of the “minister”. A drawing also needs to be kept with the register, showing the exact location of the grave. You need to keep these papers safe so that there will be no fear of your grave being disturbed by accident.” – read this excellent article about DIY burials if it’s something you want to look into. This is another good article with an example of a UK home burial.

Other Natural Burials

Now we get onto more common types of eco-friendly funerals. Here are a few options to consider (although you might have to search for companies that can do some of these in the UK as I’m pretty sure the first 2 are just ideas and not yet happening).

• Become a tree!
• Be sealed into a concrete ball.
• Have a green burial.

How do you become a tree? You have your body encased into a pod that will eventually become a tree. I love this idea as it means your friends and family have a tree they can come to visit which to me is much nicer than visiting a gravestone.

Getting sealed into a concrete ball sounds very odd, but the purpose is that the ball will be dropped into the ocean and will feed coral reefs!

Green / Woodland Burials

If you don’t have anywhere to bury a body yourself you can have a green burial at a site specifically for this purpose. In the UK, these are likely to be woodland areas. Be aware of greenwashing by people offering woodland burials. If you’re looking into eco-friendly funerals at woodland sites, questions you should ask when searching for a suitable location are:

• Is embalming discouraged / prohibited?
• Do coffins have to be made from recycled / environmentally friendly, biodegradable materials?
• Are coffins permitted to have plastic lining?
• At what depth are bodies buried? (Aerobic decomposition is enhanced the shallower the grave, burial ‘six feet under’ will result in anaerobic decomposition)
• What measures are taken to enhance biodiversity / protect and improve habitats?
• What types of memorials are allowed?
• Do they have a policy about items placed inside the coffin by families?
• What may be left on top of the graves?
• What is the planting policy of the burial ground? Are only native species of flowers and trees permitted?
• Will they allow families to conduct funerals without a funeral director? If not, it may also indicate that doing business with funeral directors and keeping them on side is more important to the site than insisting that undertakers comply with their environmental requirements.

– Natural Death

You can read more about eco-friendly funerals at The Natural Death Centre– an excellent resource.

Cost of Funerals

The average cost of a burial with a funeral director in the UK is £4,267 and a cremation is £3,247.  (How much does a funeral cost?). Considering they’re not particularly eco-friendly funerals, it’s certainly not what will happen to me when I die.

In an ideal world a member of my family will find a plot of land to bury me in. If permission isn’t granted by any landowner, then a woodland funeral or becoming a tree would be my next choice. I don’t believe that my death should cause financial hardship for those I’ve left behind and I certainly wouldn’t want my body to pollute the environment either. I just hope they’re up to the task of digging a grave for me.

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