A Guide to Green & Eco Friendly Funerals in Australia

natural burial melbourne

While eco-friendly or natural burials are not a common practice and so far, Anton Brown Funerals Brisbane has yet to receive any requests for such burials. We are ready and eager to meet your needs and wishes for an environmentally-friendly funeral or reburial. The key selling point of green burials is that they are more environmentally-friendly than other funerals, such as a traditional funeral or cremation.

The details of green burials vary greatly, but typically they involve much less resources to take care of a body, and can be held on a cemetery’s natural grounds. Green burial sites are generally indistinguishable from conventional cemeteries, since they are designed to appear as close as possible to the natural landscape. Unlike a traditional cemetery, many natural burial grounds allow flowers and other plants to grow right over a tomb.

In contrast, eco-burials put the body into a biodegradable basket or shroud burial australia, and, though laws vary from state to state, bury the body about one foot deep. Traditional burials bury the body about 1.5 metres deep, often in treated wood or metal caskets

lined with plastic. Embalming, although rarer in Australia than places such as the US, is another potential problem with traditional burials, with embalming liquids including formaldehyde potentially leaching into the ground when a casket is broken open.

The more common practice is a natural burial Melbourne, in which preparation of a body involves neither embalming fluid nor a formulation that does not contain formaldehyde. There is increasing interest in natural burial grounds, which are natural environments in which a descendant can be buried with sustainable caskets or shrouds, and with markers, such as a native tree, or just the site identified on a map.

Natural burials may occur on both private lands (subject to regulations) and any cemetery which will allow for vault-free technology. If you are attracted to this method, you will have to look for specialised eco-friendly funeral homes or natural cemeteries certified to handle such a method of burial, and may require specific permits from your state or county in order to undertake the natural burial. While the earlier document sets can help you determine the way you want to go about setting up a burial, here’s a list of states that permit in-home burials, although they all require that you first check with zoning laws before setting up an in-home burial site or burying remains on private property.

A green burial, also known as a green funeral or a natural burial, is designed to be as ecologically friendly as possible. Green funerals (also known as natural burials or forest burials) are a rather new concept, and an increasing number of people are choosing to undertake them. As with most funeral costs, prices for green funerals vary greatly depending on region and the type of burial plot.

Providing your own green casket rather than buying the high-priced option from the funeral directors can save significant cash, but choosing burial shrouds and skipping a casket altogether can reduce costs even more. When it comes to environmental impact, reducing the carbon footprint is worth up to 30kg of CO2 emissions for each burial simply by having a green burial.

Ways to lower your impact include burial in a green burial place, using an eco-friendly coffin or casket, having no headstone, and choosing to use no preservatives or chemical disinfectants. Here are a couple of eco-friendly alternatives to traditional burials and cremations that you may consider before it is too late. There are now several different environmentally friendly alternatives to both a pyre-based cremation and traditional burial.

These are increasingly credible futures which may become reality given the growing popularity of the new green death options as a viable environmentally-friendly alternative to the traditional post-death practices. As green death options allow more personalised, personalised deaths, it may be worth governments time as well to think about their potential implications, such as effects on grieving, grief, and memorialisation rituals like funerals and vigils. Through innovative designs and corporate policies that prioritise environmental protection and employee wellness, eco-friendly funeral caskets may be just the boost that the funeral industry needs to transform itself into something better.

Organic burial pods are a chance to avoid a lot of environmental consequences associated with the funeral industry. Organic burial pods are really easy, and they are an affordable alternative to embalming and burying human bodies. These pods, maybe more appropriately called urns, are a pioneering method of burial whereby a body, once cremated, is placed inside the pod, then buried under the trees.

Circle Cemetery, located in Circle Nature Reserve, southwest of Wisconsin, has offered cremated remains burials as well as un-embalmed bodies since 1995. Ramsey Creek Preserve was opened to permit burials in which bodies were not embalmed or cremated due to concerns over the adverse environmental impacts of chemicals and processes used for those burial preparation methods; this is why it is considered to be green. This type of burial does not include the costs of funeral services or memorial services, nor does any body processing/transportation.

Located in Victoria, British Columbia, Royal Oak Cemetery opened its Woodlands Graveyard space for Green burials at a cemetery beginning October 2008, dedicating its space for burials which allows the natural decomposition of the persons remains, in turn providing nutrients for the surrounding ecosystem. We advocate for the use and development of natural burial grounds, and we will be happy to explore these green options with you and your family.