Our Mission

The Conservation Burial Alliance is a collaborative of conservation burial grounds and invested allies that fosters the conservation and sustainable management of land with natural burial for the benefit of people and the planet.

Our Vision

• We envision conservation burial becoming a preferred choice for burial as we educate people about its environmental, psychological and economic benefits.
• We work within social and ecological spaces to engage people in community through a shared commitment to leaving an environmental legacy.
• We believe that natural burial is a viable strategy for conserving intrinsically valuable land and restoring depleted landscapes while improving ecological health and promoting sustainable climate change mitigation.

Our Values

• We value social and ecological spaces that sustain us and sustain the planet.
• We value the protection of land with conservation value for the benefit of all.
• We value the restoration of depleted land to ecological health.
• We value opportunities for meaningful engagement with the cycle of life through activities that affirm our connection to nature.
• We value natural burial as a choice that connects grieving people with nature at a profound moment.
• We value conservation burial for providing the environmental benefits of clean air, healthy natural habitats, carbon sequestration, and climate change mitigation.

Carolina Memorial Sanctuary, Mills River, NC

Our Purpose

• to facilitate wide public understanding of what conservation burial is;
• to provide meaningful ways to interact with the natural burial and conservation communities;
• to create and provide best practices for conservation burial;
• to educate professionals and the public about conservation burial; and
• to facilitate cooperative strategies and programs that help to make conservation burial a choice that is accessible to as broad a segment of people as possible.

What We Stand For

• We believe that conservation burial will become the preferred choice for burial as we educate people about its environmental, psychological and economic benefits.
• We work within social and ecological spaces to engage people in community through a shared commitment to leaving an environmental legacy.
• We believe that natural burial is a viable strategy for conserving intrinsically valuable land and restoring depleted landscapes while improving ecological health and promoting sustainable climate change mitigation.
• We comply with the Green Burial Council's Conservation Burial Ground certification standards.
• We seek to use burial as a conservation strategy that permanently ties individuals and families to the land through their shared story, encouraging active conservation funding support.
• We rely on and employ accepted conservation land management practices as we steward the land.
• We protect the rights of families to know their loved ones will be undisturbed by operating as a licensed cemetery.

Our Commitment to Lowering Carbon Footprint

Photo courtesy of Heidi Hannapel, The Landmatters

There is more than enough evidence to support concern about contemporary lawn and vault cemetery contributions to climate change given the tons of concrete, steel, copper, and other indestructible materials buried in American cemeteries over the past hundred years. Cremation rates are rising dramatically, and the negative effects of the process are mounting. And while inventors are crunching their brains to design better mousetraps, the fact is that nothing improves on Mother Nature. Natural burial has been working since the beginning of time, and we believe it is one answer to the looming crisis that faces us all.

Natural burial eliminates the production, transportation, and interment in the ground of both raw and finished materials associated with burial: vaults, caskets, embalming fluids. Caskets alone have enormous carbon footprints, even the biodegradable ones that travel from half way across the world. By sourcing burial containers made by local craftspeople and artists who likewise source their materials nearby, not only is there immediate and close-to-home economic benefit, but there is severe reduction in activity that compounds the toll on the environment.

Our bodies are poised to serve if we stop preventing them from doing so and instead allow natural processes to benefit the soil. Best estimates say that a natural burial releases 25 pounds of carbon (as opposed to 250 pounds per cremation, and even more for vault burial using a metal or rainforest wood casket). Natural burial works in exactly the reverse of cremation: critical probiotic elements are sequestered instead, including an estimated 25 million kg of carbon, 4.3 million kg of nitrogen, 1.3 million kg of phosphorus, and 540,000 kg of potassium. (See Burying Cremated Remains for more statistical details. Statistics courtesy of Bob Jenkins and David O. Carter of Let Your Love Grow.) Natural burial not only prevents emitting current levels of greenhouse gasses, it contributes to the environment in real ways, doing its part in combatting climate change.

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Our Commitment to Social Change

Death may be the great equalizer, but disposition choice is not always based on equal opportunity. Funerals and burials have mirrored the racial and socio-economic imbalance of our history. Making after-death options available and truly accessible to all, physically and economically, is a major part of our mission to serve.

The time is now to level the field by providing accessible and appropriate cemeteries and burials that are inclusive and creatively funded. As we break through the wall of change in so many regards, we recognize that it is our responsibility to meet the needs and desires of those choosing this exit strategy and support them with reasonable pricing the reflects our collective values. And those values center around one resonating goal: to nurture the earth by burying our bodies on protected land that will be cared for in perpetuity, regardless of race, economic status, sexual orientation, or any other qualifier or description.

Natural burial on conserved land is everyone's birthright.

Ramsey Creek Preserve, Westminster, SC

Conservation is a cause that has no end.
​There is no point at which we will say our work is finished.
​— Rachel Carson