Eco Green Funerals              

    Environmentally friendly options for funerals 

Environmentally friendly choices are becoming more popular.

An Eco Funeral is simply thinking about the environment when planning a funeral.

This is not just in the choice of coffin/casket and the materials they are made from, 

but also in how the deceased is cared for through the preparation and 

even extending to decisions about burial or cremation or natural burial.

Burial or Cremation

There is conflicting information available on burial or cremation being more environmentally friendly.  A lot of the information on-line compares the American style of burial where they have concrete vaults and steel coffins and embalm the deceased with chemicals – this is not a traditional Australian / Tasmanian burial.  Tasmania does not use concrete vaults so the coffin is buried directly in the ground to decompose. Except for the Mersey Vale Lawn Cemetery (new ground) where concrete retaining walls have been used in order to make use of low lying waste ground.

A ‘natural’ or ‘green’ burial is an approach which aims to help ‘return the body to the earth’ in the most natural way, while maintaining respect for mourning through safe rituals that have meaning for the living, the dead, and the environment. Characteristics of a ‘natural’ or ‘green’ burial typically include preparing the body without chemical preservatives or disinfectants; dressing the body in biodegradable clothing; and burying the body in biodegradable container, casket, shroud or urn, without a grave liner or burial vault.

Peter Vincent says all burials in Tasmania have always been green. The choices such as coffin type, mortuary care, memorialisation of the grave are those which can make them more environmentally friendly.