Golden Lads and Girls All Must, As Chimney Sweepers, Come to Dust
This is another post from the long-lost Obscure Ingredients, this time from 2013, though now slightly updated.
Every year, without controversy or public outcry, a mostly unexamined industry in the US throws the following list of items into the ground: 10 tons of copper and brass, 30 million board feet of hardwood timber, 1.5 million tons of reinforced concrete, 100,000 tons of steel, and a goodly bit of plastic, vinyl and fiberglass. On top of that, they toss in 1.5 million gallons of formaldehyde—a known carcinogen and biocide. Workers in this industry, who are exposed to high levels of this toxin, are significantly more likely than average to develop deadly forms of cancer and heart disease.
Astute readers may have already guessed that this polluter is the “traditional” funeral industry, which is able conduct business this way with very limited oversight, despite the environmental, resource management and land use problems they cause.
There’s more. Not only does the funeral industry lay toxic chemicals and wasted resources to rest along with our dearly departed, the gravesite is often doused with fertilizer and maintained by the cemetery with gasoline-consuming and carbon-emitting mowers. Gravesites will be tended in this fashion for decades or longer, unavailable for use for any other purpose.
I’m not trying to bust on your grandma’s burial. My grandparents were buried this way, too. Burials like these are the easy, almost default option, and most of us aren't in a mindset to question it when we've experienced a loss. Though there are reformers and rebels out there, most morticians and cemetery owners are happy to sell you what they're used to selling: a prepared, embalmed body in an expensive casket, buried inside a concrete vault in a green, park-like cemetery.
Though the funeral industry markets these choices as "traditional", they're not. This array of expensive and environmentally destructive options is a 20th century invention made possible by refrigeration and the advances in embalming made during the carnage of the American Civil War. And though consumers are often led to believe that such choices are the only legal way to bury a dead body, embalming, concrete vaults and caskets that are guaranteed not to leak are (they will) are expensive upgrades, not requirements.
In the US, cremation is becoming more popular every year. But this isn't a perfect choice, either. During a cremation, the retort (essentially a high-temperature oven) reaches temperatures between 1400 and 2100ºF, and this intense heat must be maintained for up to 2 hours. As you’d guess, this uses a ton of energy, usually natural gas. In addition, during cremation the chlorine ions present in the body are converted to dioxins, which are persistent organic environmental pollutants. The mercury contained in older dental fillings vaporizes during cremation and is sent into the atmosphere, to return to earth as acid rain. Newer, more energy-efficient crematoria are beginning to appear, and the addition of special filters and scrubbers to older facilities can significantly decrease the amount of toxins entering the atmosphere. But if one is concerned enough about the environmental impact of their passing to avoid the formaldehyde and hardwood, dioxins and spent fossil fuels aren't a great backup plan.
Death: Another Life Choice
Thankfully, there are alternatives. A particularly simple one is the small but growing trend toward green burials. No embalming, no expensive and environmentally unsound materials, no unnecessary carbon footprint—just your dead body, a biodegradable container or wrap, the earth, and your date with decomposition. Though green burial sites aren't yet common, demand is growing. The UK is ahead of us on this one, so we have an example from which to draw both inspiration and practical advice. These facilities are not only kinder to the surrounding ecosystem, they aren't obliged to care for individually entombed caskets of remains indefinitely; once one body completely decomposes, that patch of earth is ready to receive another. The Congressional Cemetery in Washington, DC, is a leader in this movement; on March 20, 2014, they received their green burial certification from the Green Burial Council. (My two dogs Jim and Radar (now deceased, sadly, but also kind of appropriately for the post, are at the Congressional Cemetery in the featured image.)
If our demand for electric cars, fair trade products and organic food are any indication, many of us are examining our actions more closely and making more sustainable choices in the way we live. But what about the way we die? If more morticians and cemetery managers presented green options, I'd bet that many people would decide to return their loved ones to the earth in a more considered manner. They may even plan a sustainable burial for themselves, rather than eventually become their our own private biohazard.
Outsourcing Death
How did handling death cease to be a private affair and become an outsourced service? How, within just a handful of generations, have we lost touch with what used to be common knowledge? Things like what happens to our bodies after we die, or how to prepare a body for burial? How does it serve us to see death and decay as abstract, and bodies as things to be whisked away by professionals at the moment death occurs? How did we become so disconnected with and clueless about the only inevitability we all face?
Here in the US, death is spoken of in hushed tones, made imprecise by euphemisms and discussed only when absolutely necessary. I'm not suggesting that we should be thrilled to have death visit our household, or that we should fetishize death, or its rituals and trappings. But ignoring the gap between watching a loved one take their last breath and viewing their makeup-wearing, formaldehyde-infused body in an open casket lets us off the hook. If people knew more about a corpse's typical journey from the moment of death until the viewing and burial, then when the time came, they'd be better informed to make decisions that are right for the deceased, their family members, their own ethics and priorities, and for the environment. And even for themselves.
This is the first post in what I hope will be an engaging look into our ultimate fate. I’ll explore the way the current cultural focus on DIY, the maker movement, local and independent food, climate change and the environment can and should be reflected in our decisions about our deaths, by exploring the parallels, and often the inconsistencies, within people’s choices about how to nourish themselves and the earth while they’re alive, and how they choose to embrace, or not, their last chance to have a beneficial relationship with the environment. I'll also be defending the notion that death should be brought back out of the shadows and, when the sad occasion occurs, back into our direct experiences.
And, of course, I'll get into Jessica Mitford's work, other alternatives to burial and cremation, and probably a lot of other geeky stuff.
Post title: from Cymbeline, IV, ii, Shakespeare
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