Environmental advocates pushing for more burials at sea ...

Published: Thursday, May 2, 2013 at 10:37 a.m.

Last Modified: Thursday, May 2, 2013 at 10:37 a.m.

In an age of recycled bottles and hybrid cars, even funerals are going green.

That's the message environmental journalist Mark Harris is bringing to the annual meeting May 4 of the Funeral Consumers Alliance Coastal Carolina at the Northeast Regional Library in Wilmington.

At a time when conventional funerals ? including burial, with casket and vault in a traditional cemetery ? can easily cost $10,000 or more, increasing numbers of people are opting for lower-cost alternatives, which they see as more environmentally friendly.

Today, the rate of cremations in the United States is 41 percent, according to the Cremation Society of North America, up from 18 percent in 1985. In some Pacific Coast states and Canadian provinces, two-thirds of corpses are cremated.

If current rates continue, Harris said, survivors will be opting for cremation more than half the time.

But that's only part of the story, said Harris, a former columnist with the Los Angeles Times Syndicate and author of the 2007 book, "Grave Matters."

"The green burial movement basically sells itself," Harris said in a telephone interview. "I spend more of my time telling people how to do it."

The movement, with a strong environmental underpinning, takes many forms, Harris noted.

Increasing numbers of dealers are offering biodegradable caskets of simple wood, cardboard or other materials. A number of consumers, reverting to an old American custom, are buying caskets and coffins in advance. (Many people are surprised to learn they can order a casket through Costco, Harris said.)

Others are skipping the funeral home and conducting funerals at home, washing and dressing their loved ones' bodies themselves and even forgoing embalming.

Another alternative is green burial: burial in a natural area, without vaults. Corpses are buried without embalming, in biodegradable materials. Sometimes sheets are used instead of caskets. Standing tombstones are not normally permitted. Graves are marked with flat stones, which will break up in a few hundred years.

A pioneering site for this approach was Ramsey Creek Preserve near Westminster, S.C., the subject of the award-winning documentary "Dying Green." "Dying Green" will be screened at 10:30 a.m. Saturday as part of Harris' program, immediately before his remarks.

North Carolina has few active green burial sites, Harris said, the nearest to Southeasern N.C. being outside of Wake Forest. Another alternative, however, is reef burial, as at Dare's Reef off Topsail Beach.

Eternal Reefs Inc. of Decatur, Ga., has created some 30 memorial reefs off the coasts of six states. Cremated remains are mixed into concrete, which is shaped into a large ball with holes on its sides. These reef balls are sunk at reef sites, which are developed as habitats for marine life. The balls are quickly covered in marine life.

Dare's Reef ? named for a Kemp's Ridley sea turtle that died at the Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation Center at Wrightsville Beach ? has so far been the site of 15 reef ball interments, said George Frankel, CEO of Eternal Reefs. The most recent were in mid-April.

"The reef ball people have done a lot of good," Harris said.

Proponents of the green burial movement argue that conventional burials absorb tremendous quantities of wood, metal and stone, and that the chemicals in embalming fluids, such as formaldehyde, pose a health hazard and could pollute local water supplies. Other motives, however, propel the green burial movement as well.

Conventional funerals often leave families as grieving spectators at a loved one's loss, Harris said. With alternative arrangements, families can take part in the funeral process ? a throwback to earlier times when American families cared for their own dead.

With Eternal Reefs, said Frankel, loved ones are invited to help mix and stir the ashes into the concrete, to place handprints on the side of the concrete, and to drop offerings (flowers and other biodegradable materials) at the reef site.

"They take ownership of the process," Frankel said.

"I've had people tell me," he added, "that people are more likely to visit them at one of these reefs than at some cemetery."

Ben Steelman: 343-2208

Source: http://www.starnewsonline.com/article/20130502/articles/130509940

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