Researchers study how lifelong environmentalists want their remains handled after death

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-02/uok-rsh020921.php

 

News Release 9-Feb-2021
University of Kansas

 

Traditional burial in a graveyard has environmental costs. Graves can take up valuable land, leak embalming chemicals and involve nonbiodegradable materials like concrete, as well as the plastic and steel that make up many caskets. But the other mainstream option -- cremation -- releases dangerous chemicals and greenhouse gasses into the environment.

So, what's an environmentalist to do when making plans for the end of life?

A new study from the University of Kansas in the journal Mortality details how older environmentalists consider death care and how likely they are to choose "green" burials and other eco-friendly options.


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"We were really surprised to see both answers -- that yes, they're planning on green burial, and no, it's not even on their radar," Stock said. "We were often the ones introducing these people that are so knowledgeable in so many areas of the environment and activism to green burial. We would ask them, 'Do you want your body to be buried in a green burial?' And many would say, 'I don't know what that is, can you tell me about it?'"

The researchers said awareness of green burials -- where a body is placed into the soil to facilitate decomposition without durable caskets or concrete chambers -- is growing for some older people. But the practice of green burial remains clouded by a funeral industry looking to make profits, and it can be influenced by considerations of family, religious and cultural traditions, as well as the practices of institutions like the military that carry out funerals.

"The business of burial has shaped all of our ideas about how we can be buried," Dennis said. "A lot of participants said they weren't aware of green burial. We're sort of presented with two choices -- you're going to be put in the cemetery or cremated. Then, we start expanding to other options, but that's only been in recent times. You see some of their desires, like, 'I want to be put out on the land.' Or you see in some of our green-burial narratives where people took it into their own hands. But you have to have be empowered to go against the grain, so I think for a lot of us we didn't even know a green burial was possible, and pushback from society, capitalism and the funeral industry has created a situation where we don't even know the possibilities -- some of the environmentalists in our study didn't know there were laws that say they can be buried on their own land."

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The investigators predicted that as green burials gain in popularity, more options for green disposal of bodies will become commonly available, even ones that today seem eccentric.

"The mushroom suit -- when we talk about that with our undergrads they're usually sort of puzzled and intrigued," Dennis said. "People wonder, 'How does that work?" But it's an interesting one. Basically, you're wrapped in material and then mushrooms grow out of you, and it cleans the toxins. There's going to be more new and awesome ways to be buried that we haven't even heard of yet."