Cemetery Series: Death and the Environment

Cortland Rural Cemetery. Photo credit to PBM.

I often think about the effect of my lifestyle and actions have on the environment, but one thing I do not often think about is my death and how it will impact the earth. Death is a natural process, and the earth easily takes it in stride, however, the way we humans take care of and dispose of cadavers can have a positive or negative impact on the earth.

The two most popular ways to dispose of human remains in the modern United States are traditional burial and cremation. Neither option is environmentally friendly. To understand why, let’s examine the processes involved in traditional burial and cremation.

Traditional Burial

If traditional burial, complete with an open casket funeral, is chosen, the deceased is first drained of all blood and pumped full of embalming fluid, which is mainly made of formaldehyde, to preserve the body for as long as possible. The cadaver is then made presentable for the funeral and placed in a casket made of varnished wood, metal, or plastic. Once the funeral is over, the body is laid to rest in a concrete vault in a nearby cemetery.

The procedure of traditional burial is largely centered on using chemicals to keep the body from decomposing for as long as possible. These chemicals, and products from the plastic used to make or coat coffins, leech into the soil where they can be absorbed by nearby plants and animals. The chemicals enter the groundwater, posing a threat to people who rely on well water for drinking. Over 750,000 gallons of formaldehyde enter the soil every year from embalmed corpses in the United States alone.

Formaldehyde does eventually decay, but it is not healthy to have 750,000 gallons of a known carcinogen released into the environment. Frequent exposure to formaldehyde during the embalming procedure puts funeral home employees at a higher risk of getting cancer. The effects of other chemicals in the coffins and burial vaults on the environment are largely unknown.

Cortland Rural Cemetery. Photo credit to PBM.

The idea of slowing down decomposition and preserving the body in an illusion of life promoted by traditional burial would make sense if the cadaver was being kept as a scientific specimen to be used for research. However, there is little point in preserving a body that will be left to rest permanently underground. Besides, without constant care it is impossible to stave off decomposition forever, even the most embalmed corpse will begin to decay after a while.

Slowing down decomposition is neither healthy nor safe. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends disposing of cadavers in a way that will allow them to break down as quickly as possible, to reduce the risk of pathogens colonizing the corpse and leaking into the soil and groundwater.

Traditional coffins and vaults waste valuable resources like wood, concrete, and steel which could be put to more effective use. In the United States, 30 million board feet of wood, 1.6 million tons of concrete, and 90,000 tons of steel are used in traditional burials, never to be seen again.

Traditional burial is rarely required by law, expensive, wasteful, and pollutes the earth. I hope that as more options for body disposal become available traditional burial will become a thing of the past.

Cortland Rural Cemetery. Photo credit to PBM.

Cremation
Cremation is widely viewed as a “green” alternative to traditional burial, but is it actually earth-friendly? Not really.

Cremating a corpse correctly takes about one hour of intense heat, 1590-1797 degrees Fahrenheit (950 degrees Celsius). Maintaining this heat level takes a large amount of energy, often obtained from fossil fuels. During the combustion process, pollutants like carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, soot, and trace metals such as highly toxic mercury from dental fillings are released into the atmosphere. Each body burned uses 28 gallons of fossil fuels, finite resources, and releases 540 pounds of carbon dioxide. This adds up, considering 912,000 cadavers are cremated each year in the United States. The ashes left after cremation are not harmful to the environment, but since they are devoid of any nutrients, they cannot be used to nourish future life.

There are ways to reduce the environmental impact of cremation, such as choosing crematoria with scrubbers or filters which help prevent pollutants from entering the atmosphere, wrapping the body in a natural shroud to make sure no excess chemicals are released as the shroud burns, removing dental fillings and medical implants before cremation to prevent release of trace chemicals, and using a biodegradable urn if the ashes will be buried. Some crematoria donate to the carbon fund, an organization which works to reduce pollution and conserve nature, but are there ways to avoid producing pollution in the first place? Fortunately—yes.

Cortland Rural Cemetery. Photo credit to PBM.

Green Burial

Green burial is less of a new earth-friendly fad and more of a return to burial practices before embalming and concrete vaults existed. During green burial, the body is simply buried in a biodegradable coffin or shroud without any invasive chemicals. After being laid to rest, the corpse naturally decomposes and nourishes the earth. Some traditional cemeteries have a section dedicated to green burial, but there are other burial grounds which only accept chemical free bodies and shrouds/coffins. A few green cemeteries allow headstones that lay flat to the ground, while other cemeteries serve as nature preserves and no grave markers are allowed at all. In those places, graves can be found by GPS.  Some states allow people to conduct funerals in their own homes and conduct green burials on their own property, but the laws on this practice vary considerably by locality.

Green burial is cheaper than traditional burial because no expensive supplies or chemicals are used. One downfall of green burial is that it requires lots of open space, which is generally not available to city dwellers.

Composting Cadavers
Someday city inhabitants may have their own form of green burial consisting of specialized buildings for composting cadavers. The fertile soil produced by these facilities could later be used as a fertilizer for flower gardens. Similar to green burial, body composting will not release greenhouse gases or chemicals. Currently, composting corpses is not available to humans, though farmers commonly compost their deceased livestock.

Promession and Alkaline Hydrolysis

Promession and alkaline hydrolysis are two methods of body disposal that are advertised as being good for the environment, though an in-depth analysis of their effects on the earth has yet to be conducted.

Promession is similar in concept to green burial or urban composting, except the body is reduced to small organic fragments by a treatment with liquid nitrogen before being buried. Like the body composting, promession is not yet available to customers.

Cortland Rural Cemetery. Photo credit to PBM.

Alkaline hydrolysis, however is available in a few facilities in the United States. Alkaline hydrolysis, also called green cremation, is a process where the body is reduced to a sterile fluid and some bone fragments, using an alkaline solution of water and potassium hydroxide. Instead of slowing down the decomposition process as embalming does, alkaline hydrolysis speeds it up. Alkaline hydrolysis uses one-eighth of the amount of energy that cremation does and it does not release trace metals or greenhouse gases into the environment. The leftover bone fragments can be buried or scattered, similar to the ashes left over after cremation.

Donate to Science

Donating one’s body to science may not be environmentally friendly in the same way green burial or body composting is, but cadaver donations help researchers in a variety of ways from teaching anatomy to students, studying how bodies decompose, to research projects like testing safe seatbelts and airbags for new car models.

Filling out an application before death and going to a medical evaluation session are necessary steps for those who wish to donate their bodies. Body donation is by far the cheapest option of body disposal, in fact it is completely free. Once a cadaver is successfully donated, the family of the deceased has no control over what research project their loved one will participate in. The family will later receive ashes of the deceased and a letter naming the project their loved one was involved in.

Body donation is not for everyone, but the donated corpses provide vital resources for scientists. It is difficult to judge the environmental impact of body donation because the corpses are used in a wide variety of ways. However the cadavers are being used to

expand our knowledge, which is valuable to our society.

Burial at Sea

Full-body burial at sea is a lesser-known option that helps the environment by saving land for other uses. If the body is wrapped in biodegradable material, as required by most providers of sea burial, then the body can decompose naturally, with little environmental impact.

Cremated remains can also be put to good use underwater by becoming building materials for reef reconstruction technology.

Cortland Rural Cemetery. Photo credit to PBM.

These are just a few of the popular and earth-friendly options for body disposal. There are many other more eccentric options such as cryonics, mummification, shooting one’s ashes into space, or transforming the carbon in one’s body into a diamond. Though interesting, these options do not benefit the earth and are highly expensive.

For more on cemeteries and the environment keep an eye out for my next blog post in the Cemetery Series: The Cemetery Habitat.

Note: Flowers

Cut flowers, popular at funerals, are often grown in overseas in countries with poorly enforced environmental policies or no environmental policies at all. A whole slew of chemicals are used to grow these flowers, including DDT, which is illegal in the United States. These chemicals harm workers in the flower industry and the wildlife around the greenhouse where they are grown. Employees in these greenhouses are not only exposed to dangerous chemicals, but start working at a young age for long hours and have very few rights. The transportation required to ship these flowers across the world uses resources like fuel and releases greenhouse gases. It is possible to still have nice flowers and avoid contributing to the environmental harm by buying organic or fair trade flowers.

Sources.