Forever Fernwood cemetery has debut a new and greener way to care for the dead. Devoting 16 acres of the Fernwood land to try and make this cemetery a little more green. Tyler Cassidy opened this old cemetery said that each of these little graves are ecosystems directed primarily at the dying baby-boomer generation. Mr.Cassity being in this $15 billion dollar funeral industry had to do what about 140 woodland cemeteries in England did and make his cemetery a bit greener. You can't just be a corspse anymore you have to be a eco-friendly corpse.
Biodegradable coffins (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/magazine/09_6_coffin.html)
"Green" has become more and more popular lately so why not "green" burials which has been increasing in popularity lately and the ecopod is one of the first green products to hit the funeral industry that satisfies consumers. this eco-pod is a coffin that is 100 % biodegradable held together by recycled paper. Cynthia Beal, the founder of The natural burial company is hoping that this although simple concept will help encourage a push popularity towards natural burial parks which there aren't many of.
Analysis-
Both of these articles address this concept of being green/natural. The first article discusses having green cemtaries while the second article discusses having green coffins. Both articles address the popularity of the subject (whether high or low) yet still did not discuss an alternative to their own way of being "green/Natural" which i felt would have made their arguments much stronger (a question i asked my expert). I wanted to know how much being eco-friendly like this cost and is it a reasonable goal that can be achieved on a wider scale whether national or international. The articles here inspired my questions for my expert and gave a chance to learn a little more abProxy-Connection: keep-alive
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t the perspectives on green and natural burial.
Dr.Troyer Interview and Analysis:
I interviewed Dr.Troyer regarding his thoughts on the green and natural burial process. He (being a world expert) had alot of very intelligent things to say about the topic. I basically wanted to know if green/natural burial were the same thing and if they really did help the enviornment more than other forms of care of the dead. I wanted to know what defines a natural burial? to which hes responded saying "A Natural Burial generally means nothing is done to the body (embalming for example) and the corpse is placed in a simple casket or burial shroud and then buried in a shallower-than-normal grave. The natural burial cemeteries often look like forests or woodlands. Generally speaking, a large or even medium sized grave marker is not used." and is natural burial the same as a green burial, he said "Not all the time. The natural burial usually means in the ground. A green burial can involve all kinds of technology: cremation, alkaline hydrolysis, promession, etc. Sometimes green burials don't even look that 'natural' even if they're more eco-friendly."
I also wanted to know of examples where this green burial/ natural burial has really single handedly helped be more eco-friendly. I really wanted to know if this would work on a large scale possibly maybe even on a national one and if so would it really help us? i asked what Dr.Troyer thought and he told me that the countries with the best practices were the Western European countries such as Denmark, Sweden, Norway etc. he said that those countries have been looking at these issues for a while and really doing a lot with new kinds of technology. I don't know if there's a direct correlation with natural/green burials as much as it is evidence of a different way of thinking. he said that the technologies there haven't run into problems (or not too many) and it's largely because the general population supports the idea, which i think is what we need to do here.
We put so much emphasis on being individually green that we dont realize that the few of us that are doing it aren't doing much. According to Dr. Troyer the reason it is workign so well in western europe is because this idea of green/natural burial is supported by the people therefore it has to be practiced by the people. If we would both support and practice this way of caring for the dead it may have an impact. However this begs the question how big will the impact even be. According to Dr. Troyer there is no obvious correlation between having green/natural burials and being a more eco-friendly country. I want to know whether or not there is another option, whether or not we can find a way to be green that is both reasonable and feasible?
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