Conservation Burial Grounds:
- Believe that conservation burial will become the preferred choice for burial as we educate people about its environmental, psychological and economic benefits.
- Work within social and ecological spaces to engage people in community through a shared commitment to leaving an environmental legacy.
- 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. (Read our full Mission Vision, Values and Purpose.)
- Comply with the Green Burial Council's Conservation Burial Ground certification standards.
- 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.
- Rely on and employ accepted conservation land management practices as we steward the land.
- 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. (See the Green Burial Council's Disposition Statistics.) 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 What Land Trusts Need to Know About Cremation 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.
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 What Land Trusts Need to Know About Cremation 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.
Our Commitment to Social Change
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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
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The movement to address climate change is about something deeper than justice, its about solidarity. Human solidarity."
— Bill McKibben
