Green Burial Council Certification Standards
for Conservation Burial Cemeteries
Conservation burial cemeteries seeking certification from the Green Burial Council (the only independent, third-party certifying entity in the world) must meet rigid standards of performance to qualify for the highest level available. Several members of the Conservation Burial Alliance were instrumental in developing the original standards in 2005, and others in updating them again in 2020, with the assistance of land trust and green burial experts. These standards are essential in protecting consumers from greenwashing and fraudulent schemes, and support cemetery operators who provide this vital service to individuals and their broader communities, now and into the future. (For more information on certification, go to Why GBC Certification Matters.)
1. Accurately represent earned level of GBC certification in marketing materials, websites, and conversations with the public, clients, and the media.
2. Provide clients and families with the opportunity to participate in the burial and ritual process, in keeping with state law and with these standards.
3. Accept for burial only decedents that have not been embalmed or those embalmed only with GBC-approved, nontoxic chemicals.
4. Prohibit the use of a vault (partial, inverted, or otherwise), a vault lid, concrete box, slab or partitioned liner in the burial plot.
5. All burial containers, shrouds, and other associated products made only of natural, biodegradable materials.
6. Develop a Maintenance and Operations Manual to be utilized by all staff members, contractors, and volunteers to implement site goals, policies, and best practices.
7. Establish an endowment fund to ensure the long-term maintenance of the site by setting aside at least 10% of all burial plot sales.
8. Conduct an Ecological Impact Assessment, starting with a property baseline document that includes existing ecological conditions and sensitive area analysis. Update periodically to assess future property/habitat conditions and plant inventory.
9. Restrict access and burial operations within sensitive areas as identified in the Ecological Impact Assessment.
10. Use operational and burial practices that have no long-term degradation of soil health, plant diversity, water quality, and ecological habitat.
11. Limit the type and size of memorial markers so that they do not impair the ecological conditions and aesthetic of the natural cemetery landscape.
12. Site conditions as identified in the Ecological Impact Assessment and sensitive areas analysis, will restrict burial density on the property; therefore, Natural and Conservation burial grounds will have limits to allowable burial density. For Natural Burial, the cemetery’s average density shall not exceed 500 burials/acre. For Conservation Burial, average density shall not exceed 300 burials/acre. Burial density of sensitive areas may be transferred to less restricted areas on the property to maximum densities of Natural Burial of 600/acre, Conservation Burial of 400/acre.
13. Establish and apply strategies that conserve, preserve, enhance, or restore the historic native or natural habitat and flora of the region.
14. Conserve or restore a minimum of 20 acres, or 5 acres if contiguous to other protected land.
15. Operate in conjunction with a government agency or a nonprofit conservation organization that has legally binding responsibility for perpetual monitoring and enforcement of the easement.
16. Guarantee preservation of the burial ground by deed restriction, conservation easement or other legally binding and irrevocable agreement that runs with the land and is enforceable in perpetuity.
Revised and adopted January 5, 2020
2. Provide clients and families with the opportunity to participate in the burial and ritual process, in keeping with state law and with these standards.
3. Accept for burial only decedents that have not been embalmed or those embalmed only with GBC-approved, nontoxic chemicals.
4. Prohibit the use of a vault (partial, inverted, or otherwise), a vault lid, concrete box, slab or partitioned liner in the burial plot.
5. All burial containers, shrouds, and other associated products made only of natural, biodegradable materials.
6. Develop a Maintenance and Operations Manual to be utilized by all staff members, contractors, and volunteers to implement site goals, policies, and best practices.
7. Establish an endowment fund to ensure the long-term maintenance of the site by setting aside at least 10% of all burial plot sales.
8. Conduct an Ecological Impact Assessment, starting with a property baseline document that includes existing ecological conditions and sensitive area analysis. Update periodically to assess future property/habitat conditions and plant inventory.
9. Restrict access and burial operations within sensitive areas as identified in the Ecological Impact Assessment.
10. Use operational and burial practices that have no long-term degradation of soil health, plant diversity, water quality, and ecological habitat.
11. Limit the type and size of memorial markers so that they do not impair the ecological conditions and aesthetic of the natural cemetery landscape.
12. Site conditions as identified in the Ecological Impact Assessment and sensitive areas analysis, will restrict burial density on the property; therefore, Natural and Conservation burial grounds will have limits to allowable burial density. For Natural Burial, the cemetery’s average density shall not exceed 500 burials/acre. For Conservation Burial, average density shall not exceed 300 burials/acre. Burial density of sensitive areas may be transferred to less restricted areas on the property to maximum densities of Natural Burial of 600/acre, Conservation Burial of 400/acre.
13. Establish and apply strategies that conserve, preserve, enhance, or restore the historic native or natural habitat and flora of the region.
14. Conserve or restore a minimum of 20 acres, or 5 acres if contiguous to other protected land.
15. Operate in conjunction with a government agency or a nonprofit conservation organization that has legally binding responsibility for perpetual monitoring and enforcement of the easement.
16. Guarantee preservation of the burial ground by deed restriction, conservation easement or other legally binding and irrevocable agreement that runs with the land and is enforceable in perpetuity.
Revised and adopted January 5, 2020
It is our collective and individual responsibility...
to preserve and tend to the world in which we live."
— Dalai Lama
