Dear Human of Planet Earth,
Other than death, few things are sure in life.
Once upon a time, the manner of your last rites was bound by tradition and culture. Today local costs, grave availability, family economics and personal preferences all have their influence.
Increasingly, people are opting for cremation because it’s cheaper than burial. Meanwhile, burial plots are growing scarcer and more expensive. After cremations, ashes can be kept, while graves need to be visited and tidied.
Like my dear aunt whom we buried two months ago, I’ve always hated the idea of cremation. On the other hand, a friend of mine hates the idea of having her body decomposed by earthworms, insects and microbes.
Forgive the cliché, but I’m charmed by the thought of being part of the ‘circle of life’. Cremation would turn my body’s carbon into more atmospheric carbon dioxide. At least a burial gives my remains the opportunity to be incorporated into blades of grass, insects, bird food, hatchlings, oak trees, squirrels, hedgehogs, dormice …
In recent years I began to question why, in this climate crisis where we continually think about the carbon emissions of burning trees and fossil fuels, we don't question the carbon emissions of cremation.
Cremation by fire is an essential spiritual process in some faiths, but for the rest of us, is it really responsible?
But in searching for the responsible option, some of what you’ll discover will surprise you. My first surprise came when I saw the price of eco-coffins! You could get an oak coffin for the same or less. On the other hand, this site boasts an impressive range of eco-coffins listed no prices at all!
Considering caskets and more upscale coffins are made with metalwork, lacquers, synthetic material lining and cushioning, when we reflect on impact, we’ve got production emissions and soil pollution to factor in as well.
Speak now or forever hold your peace
Your family will probably care for your deceased body in the way they see fit.
My aunt had a quiet scorn for the ostentatious, particularly in death. When she passed, we couldn’t have afforded to be over the top, so there was no danger of that. For the burial, we gave her new clothes and a modest, simple (but not cheap-looking) coffin. We wanted to treat her the way she liked to see others treated.
‘You don’t take anything with you. You get six feet of earth and a box,’ she used to say.
Not expecting a sudden and final illness, she had no plans for her funeral.
We buried her with the simple wedding ring her partner had bought her some months before. We did it to make the living happy - him. Funeral rites are for the benefit of the living, as much as for the dead.
As humans we seek to bury our dead in a dignified way and our rites of passage are sacred, even in the absence of religious belief. Your family will decide whether the coffin should be bright red and shiny, woven from willow, destined for the woodlands or a simple cremation. Your family will probably care for your deceased body in the way they see fit.
If you care about the environmental impact of how you’ll be buried or cremated, do your research, make your plans, let your family know, and if necessary or possible, pay for it in advance.
An eco-burial is what I want. Wrap me in cotton or whatever material burdens the earth least in its making, and give me a shallow woodland or meadow grave. Add a coffin if you must but choose one whose creation and decomposing will be kindest to our habitat, our home.
Startling Considerations from the BBC’s ‘The Climate Question: Can We Have a Climate-Friendly Death?’
Archbishop Desmond Tutu avoided the grand casket when he died. He wanted to model simplicity and arranged aqua-cremation, a final act reflective of his beliefs:
‘The final measure of a generation’s courage is the memory of what they have done. We must live as the generation that pulled humanity back from the brink of catastrophic climate change.’
A modern gas fire cremation generates about 126 kg CO2e
A traditional land burial generates about 4.1 kg CO2e
There is a 0 kg CO2e option but it involves a shallow grave and careful choice of simple bio-degradable materials1
Switching to this zero-carbon option would save the UK 400,000 tonnes of emissions per year, the equivalent of 2 million trips between London and Edinburgh, enough to power 100,000 homes for 12 months.
(The obvious pragmatic question is where would all these shallow graves be, and who would dig them? But change is the only constant. We didn’t always cremate our dead as a first choice after all. As Kate points out, it is legal in the UK to bury your dead yourself in your back garden - you just need to do the paperwork and there are some guidelines).
Aqua-cremation uses a chemical solution to dissolve the body, rather than fire and comes in at 20 kg CO2e
The traditional pyre method of cremation, as practised in India, requires 400-500kg of wood per body. To this end, India uses 68-78 million tonnes of trees annually.
The sacred rites of cremation in traditional Hindu practice use fire to purify the body and release the soul. Modifications of the traditional method reduce emissions by 60% and more eco-conscious Indians are going for this, though it’s not the easiest shift, because who wants to be mocked for going for a cheaper method, even if it’s greener?
And I can definitely relate to deferring to a loved ones’ preferences in death, which might be more traditional or conventional than my own.
The traditional six-foot depth for a grave offers fewer microbes compared to a shallow burial. At the traditional depth there will be more anaerobic decomposition and more unfavourable emissions, including of methane! (We have a comparable situation with food waste that goes to landfill).
Visiting a grave three times a year for twenty years wipes out emissions saved from choosing burial over cremation. Obviously, this doesn’t apply if the cemetery is fairly local.
As for that, the Irish host of this episode of The Climate Question podcast admits he’s willing to give up the idea of the traditional mahogany ‘bells and whistles’ casket preferred by Irish families, but he won’t be deterred from carrying visiting his relatives in their graves. He jokes as the podcast wraps up, that anyone visiting him after he dies can come on a bike.
But yes, praying for our dead, or at least visiting their graves and remembering them in some way, is a loving duty many of us take seriously.
When Ah Dead Bury Meh Clothes
As I sat down to write to you, the refrain, ‘When Ah Dead Bury Meh Clothes’ came to me. I found this re-make by Anselm Douglas of a Growling Tiger chant by the same name. Anselm Douglas’ version is a song about a man going to a stick fight and declaring his death wishes, should the stick fighting result in a fatal injury.
‘When Ah dead bury meh clothes,
Ah don’t want dem boy wear meh shirt and tie,
When Ah dead bury meh clothes,
And doh forgot to tell meh woman doh cry.’
Anselm Douglas again, but this time with video clips of contemporary stick-fighting competitions:
If you’re opting for clothes, rather than a shroud, go for the bio-degradable pieces in your wardrobe. In the original Growling Tiger chant, the character is concerned that he’s spent $1000 on clothes, quite a fortune decades ago when the Growling Tiger was entertaining crowds - and something tells me those impulses had everything to do with hoarding his possessions in death rather than freeing them up for the saga boys in his community to make good use of.2
Conclusions differ. So many variables.
Mike Berners-Lee, whose book How Bad Are Bananas I often reference, has come to a different conclusion.
He believes for many of us, cremation by a modern crematorium furnace - as opposed to the 8-hour traditional wood-burning pyre, is the preferable option. In his calculations, he includes mourners’ travel to a distant cemetery, the cost of maintaining the grave, including use of weedicides and return visits over time.
But it’s worth remembering there are many variables, and some of these are specific to individual circumstance and place.
In Trinidad, where I grew up, the cemetery with our family plot was less than fifteen minutes’ walking distance from our home and we didn’t have a car anyway.
My aunt’s funeral a few months ago was across the road from the funeral home, while the local crematorium was a mere ten-minute drive away. The relative most likely to visit twice a year lives 15 minutes walking distance from her grave.
As ever and particularly with so many variables, Mike Berners-Lee’s calculations are guidelines and averages, rather than rigid prescription.
As he puts it, comfortingly,
‘It really is OK to do what you want - after all, death is a full-stop to your carbon footprint.’
On the other hand, if you’re ready to go deeper, Kate really gets into the details here:
Eco-Friendly Funerals - The Cheaper & Eco-Friendly Way to Die (greenecofriend.co.uk)
And while the Tree Pod burial Kate introduced me to makes me think of The Matrix, it might also be the most popular burial approach of the future! Imagine a wood of trees, all nourished by the humans underneath. After the destruction we’ve unleashed, it would make a change for us to be systematically recycled into giving life after our own death! Does that thought make you smile?
With Love,
Your Friendly Neighbourhood Radical,
Croydon,
London,
That patch of earth known today as the United Kingdom
Lat +51.51 Long, -0.118
My aunt, despite not being climate-conscious, had a lower climate impact in her life than most.
Zero net emissions suggests that any carbon emissions are neutralised by carbon capture. eg any net emissions in transport of a cotton shroud and bamboo coffin are cancelled by the carbon capture of decomposition, including the person whose body is returning to soil.
The saga boy. Here the adjective ‘saga’ refers to a person who enjoys dressing in style and moving with swagger or confidence.