Every year, during our family vacation in Cape Code, we enjoy all classic summer pleasures: scaling sand dunes, walking on the beach, monitoring seals, eating oysters and reading books that we suggested throughout the year.
Also perform purchases. My grandson wanted small games. My daughter took the opportunity to take several puzzles from a thousand pieces of the regional game store. I bought hoops and two books.
And an area in a cemetery. tomb.
It is close to a group of oak, in a cemetery in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, where some graves are worn algae, whose history dates back to civil war, to the point that you can no longer read from the buried. People allow people who are not residents to be in their last place there, and agree with organic burial.
Those who visit Cape Code every summer we usually imagine getting a property there. Of course, in general, one dreams of a place that he can use in life, which is still far from the reach of my hand.
But buying lands in a cemetery for environmental burial was amazingly available and would allow my body – when he has no use – quickly and naturally, with less environmental damage. As an additional benefit: If my grandchildren one day want to visit me, my grave will be in a very dear place, as my daughter spent almost every summer.
“Is there a lot of attention to organic burial?” I asked the honorable official of the city’s cemetery, who was offering me the facilities.
“I don’t think we have a traditional burial two years ago,” he answered ...“.
There are no accurate numbers about the number of people in the United States who choose environmental or natural burial, but Lee Wester, the former president of Green Burial BoardYou are watching the increasing number of graves that allow them.
The first was Ramsey Creek Preserve, who started work in Westminster, South Carolina, in 1998. By 2016, Wester List It included 150 graves. Now add 497. Most of them, like Wellfleet, are hybrids that accept both traditional and environmental burial.
Although a survey between consumers he conducted The National Association of Fuel Managers It was found that less than 10 % of the respondents prefer environmental burial (compared to 43 % prefer to burn bodies and 24 % who choose traditional burial), more than 60 % said they are interested in exploring environmental and natural alternatives.
“This is related to the generation of Baby Boomers that reaches an era that wants to live according to what he preached,” Webster said. “They are looking for environmental cohesion. They are looking for originality and simplicity.”
He added: “If you are breastfeeding your children and reinforced it from the cardboard roll toilet, this definitely arouses your interest.” (I raise my hands).
Besides environmental concerns, many of the surveyed people said they are attracted to environmental burial at a lower cost. The average funeral price with burial in 2023 was about $ 10,000, not including the plot in the cemetery or memorial, according to the directors of the National Assembly.
Although the defenders of Wester criticizes the burning of the bodies For its toxic emissions And the use of fossil fuels, this method is currently nearly two -thirds of the country’s final destinations. One reason: its average cost is $ 6,300, does not include burial or grave.
These prices differ greatly by site. I live in Brooklyn, where the characteristics are expensive even for the dead, and where it is identified Between 21,000 dollars and 30,000 dollars For the ground. The burial in its new environmental section is relatively cheaper: $ 15,000.
But about 40 miles from Nashville, the environmental burial costs Larcsbur $ 4000, including the land and almost almost necessary, except for a flat, flat, flat, registered local stone plate, if the family wants it.
Larkspur is one of the 15 environmental graves in the country that works in partnership with land preservation organizations – in this case, preserving nature – to maintain space.
“This is what prevents forests from becoming urban,” said Larcsbur’s founder, John Christian Fire.
Phifer included the common elements of environmental burial: “Without chemical embalming, without steel coffin, without tangible cellar. Other environmental funeral articles.
Environmental funerals are usually different. In Larkspur, which attends the burial often a tour of the path that leads to the place of burial dresses with jeans and mountain shoes instead of black claims.
“Instead of observing, people actively participate, as Phifer said. We call the family to help lower the body with ropes, dirt or dirt in the grave, then cover it with the ground or pine branches and flowers..“.
When Larkspur started working in 2018, Phifer was his only employee and buried 17 bodies in 161 acres. Last year, an eight -people team introduced 80 burials, and the cemetery buys more lands.
Other alternatives to traditional burial also appeared. Company Earth funeral It has facilities in Nevada, Washington, and soon in Maryland, what is known as “human fertilization”. In this process, the body is heated along with vegetable materials for 30 to 45 days inside a high -tech cylinder, where everything finally turns into a cubic meter of the ground.
This is equivalent to about 300 pounds, more than most families that they can use, so the rest is donated with local land preservation organizations. Cost: between $ 5,000 and 6000 dollars.
The alkaline water decomposition, which is already legal in nearly half of the states of the country, is the body with chemicals and water, leaving the bone fragments spray that can be spread or buried, in addition to the liquid waste that must be disposed of.
Environmental, including burning traditional corpses, “the three operations have consequences we can simply avoid placing the body on the ground” and allowing microbes and fungi to make the rest.
However, the space in the graves near the big cities is limited and increasingly expensive.
“I don’t think there is an ideal choice, but we can do it better than traditional methods,” said Tom Harries, founder of the Earth’s funeral.
The discussion will surely continue on the most environmentally environment. But ecological burial had a great meaning for Line McFarland and her husband, New Del Anderson, who was known to Larcsbur through their episcopal church in Nashville.
“The idea of returning to Earth seemed beautiful to me,” he said.
His mother, Ruby Valdeen, 94, was one of the first people to be buried in Larkasbur in 2018, in an open meadow that attracts butterflies.
Last spring, Anderson, who was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, died at the age of 90 years and was buried a few meters away from Valdeen, in a coffin from the disintegrated wicker. Dozens of relatives read the camels and poems, shared the tales and sang “amazing blessing.”
Then they took the outskirts and filled the grave. McFarland, 80, who is planning to bury him there, said exactly what her husband wanted, and he is a lifetime lover and former leader of the boy’s scouts.
I don’t know if my loved ones are ready for such physical effort. But my son – in case – although he still lacks many decades to make decisions about the end of life – I love the idea of environmental burial in a place we all appreciate.
Prices are what I consider now May The cemetery was low enough – $ 4,235, precisely – to buy lands that could put me and seven descendants, if I had a lot.
I hope that this plan, as well as reducing the impact of death on a weak ecosystem, will reduce the burden of the family on having to make hasty decisions. In 76, I do not know how what you left will develop. But I know where it will end.
New aging occurs in cooperation with New York Times.
This article was translated with the help of an artificial intelligence program, then it was carefully edited by humans.