'Green' Burials Growing in Popularity

Jennifer Johnson, secretary of Greensprings Natural Cemetery, pounds in a marker as Mary Woodsen, left, cemetery president, talks with Susan Thomas, cemetery treasurer, about the 93-acre cemetery in Newfield, N.Y., April 29, 2006. The cemetery is the first natural cemetery preserve in New York and one of just a handful in the United States. At Greensprings, bodies cannot be embalmed or otherwise chemically preserved. (AP Photo/Kevin Rivoli) (Kevin Rivoli - AP)

At her brother's funeral, the children were able to play in a nearby stream, while his friends picnicked and performed bluegrass music.

"I like that the land is wild and always changing with time," she said. "Whether we like it or not, death is about change. To pretend my brother is just sleeping under a mowed and manicured lawn is to deny that death is about change."

Today, there are 70 people interred at Ramsey Creek, said Campbell's wife, Kimberley, who is vice president of Memorial Ecosystems, which runs the cemetery.

"We've seen growth in the hospice movement," she said. "We've seen an upswing of home birthing. People are interested in returning to the simple ways. This is just a dust-to-dust approach to funerals."

Robert Fells, a spokesman for the Virginia-based International Cemetery and Funeral Association, said the green concept is just a repackaging of what the conventional cemetery burial already offers.

Contrary to widespread belief, embalming is not required by law so people can refuse it, Fells said. Buy a no-frills wooden coffin. Plant a bush instead of a gravestone. Those options are currently available at most cemeteries, he said.

According to the Federal Trade Commission, the average funeral in the United States costs about $6,000. Many exceed $10,000. Even cremation typically costs more than $1,000 _ and has its environmental downside: Cremation uses energy and releases dioxin and mercury (up to 6 grams a body) while preventing nutrients in bodies from enriching the land.

Josh Slocum, of the Funeral Consumers Alliance, a Burlington, Vt.-based federation of advocacy groups, said natural cemeteries provide "another choice for consumers, and that's always good."

"Most of what we think of today as the traditional funeral _ embalming, expensive caskets, manicured cemeteries _ are practices started in the 20th century when burying the dead became an industry," he said. "This is really nothing new. It's what the pilgrims and the pioneers did ... Really natural burial is as old as death itself."

The Greensprings preserve, located 75 miles southwest of Syracuse, was once mostly pasture and cropland before it was acquired from a conservation-minded seller.

"Someday, we'd like to see most of the property return to the native woodlands that used to be here," said Woodsen.

Eventually, trails will wind through meadows, woods and burial areas.

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On the Net:

Greensprings Natural Cemetery Preserve: http://www.naturalburial.org

Ramsey Creek Preserve: http://ramseycreekpreserve.com