Green in Death
Hey folks,
I know, it’s Sunday, I have the normal Sunday stuff coming right up, but I had to comment on this. You want to know how nuts these Global Warming Chicken Little crowd truly are? Get this Reuters -Canadians urged to go green even when they're gone By Shallima MaharajFri Jun 15, 11:02 PM ET
North Americans who spend their lives reducing, reusing and recycling can keep doing their bit for the environment after they die, if Europe's "green funeral" trend makes its way across the Atlantic.
Canadian activists say green send-offs could help the dead contribute to a sustainable environment, with funerals that use shrouds or biodegradable containers and involve no embalming, no headstones and no grave linings.
"Having a green burial is one more thing a person can do to lessen the impact we're having on our environment," said Dorothy Yada of the Memorial Society of British Columbia.
"Environmental organizations should take it on as something they could add to their list of things to do ... if people asked for it more often, (the cemeteries and funeral parlours) would do it."
{Laughing} Are you sure? There is a lot of money lost in the linings and Coffins, embalming, ETC. You know how much a headstone costs? I guess they will find away to charge for dumping your dead, rotting, loved one in a hole. But either way, whatever. But you have to know, according to them embalming is EVIL.
Bodies are typically embalmed to preserve the remains for public display at funerals. The results last about 10 days before decomposition begins again.
"Embalming does three things... It requires the body to be worked over, organs sucked out and replaced with carcinogens. Second, it requires workers to be exposed to two potentially toxic chemicals (formaldehyde and glutaraldehyde)," said Joe Sehee of the Green Burial Council in Los Angeles.
He reckons a million gallons of embalming fluid makes its way into North American soil each year.
He reckons, does he? How about cremation? I thought that was the best way to go. You know, ashes to ashes, dust to dust?
And when bodies are cremated, mercury -- mostly from dental fillings -- can get into the atmosphere and into rivers, said Mary Woodsen, of Greensprings Natural Cemetery in New York.
{Laughing even harder}
Currently, there are no green cemeteries in Canada, only small plots within regular cemeteries.
The Royal Oak Burial Park in Victoria, British Columbia, on Canada's Pacific coast, will begin offering the organic option next fall.
"In the last couple of years, there's been substantially more interest," said cemetery spokesman Stephen Olson.
"I think people are looking at every facet of their lives and saying: Is there something I can be doing differently?"
Yeah because the sad fact is that there are a lot of sheepeople out there that are being bombarded with a daily lie that says they are destroying the planet.
The trend is a lot further along in Britain, where there are some 200 so-called natural burial sites.
"We've done between 80 and 90 burials in the last six or seven years," said Penny Lally of Penwith Woodland Burial Place in Cornwall, England. "I think people like the idea of going back to the earth and creating a tree instead of a crowded cemetery."
So your rotten flesh is equal to you creating a tree? What are we planting people now? Folks, these people are truly nuts. You do whatever you want when you die. I am leaning very much toward Cremation.
Peter
Hey folks,
I know, it’s Sunday, I have the normal Sunday stuff coming right up, but I had to comment on this. You want to know how nuts these Global Warming Chicken Little crowd truly are? Get this Reuters -Canadians urged to go green even when they're gone By Shallima MaharajFri Jun 15, 11:02 PM ETNorth Americans who spend their lives reducing, reusing and recycling can keep doing their bit for the environment after they die, if Europe's "green funeral" trend makes its way across the Atlantic.
Canadian activists say green send-offs could help the dead contribute to a sustainable environment, with funerals that use shrouds or biodegradable containers and involve no embalming, no headstones and no grave linings.
"Having a green burial is one more thing a person can do to lessen the impact we're having on our environment," said Dorothy Yada of the Memorial Society of British Columbia.
"Environmental organizations should take it on as something they could add to their list of things to do ... if people asked for it more often, (the cemeteries and funeral parlours) would do it."
{Laughing} Are you sure? There is a lot of money lost in the linings and Coffins, embalming, ETC. You know how much a headstone costs? I guess they will find away to charge for dumping your dead, rotting, loved one in a hole. But either way, whatever. But you have to know, according to them embalming is EVIL.Bodies are typically embalmed to preserve the remains for public display at funerals. The results last about 10 days before decomposition begins again.
"Embalming does three things... It requires the body to be worked over, organs sucked out and replaced with carcinogens. Second, it requires workers to be exposed to two potentially toxic chemicals (formaldehyde and glutaraldehyde)," said Joe Sehee of the Green Burial Council in Los Angeles.
He reckons a million gallons of embalming fluid makes its way into North American soil each year.
He reckons, does he? How about cremation? I thought that was the best way to go. You know, ashes to ashes, dust to dust?
And when bodies are cremated, mercury -- mostly from dental fillings -- can get into the atmosphere and into rivers, said Mary Woodsen, of Greensprings Natural Cemetery in New York.
{Laughing even harder}
Currently, there are no green cemeteries in Canada, only small plots within regular cemeteries.
The Royal Oak Burial Park in Victoria, British Columbia, on Canada's Pacific coast, will begin offering the organic option next fall.
"In the last couple of years, there's been substantially more interest," said cemetery spokesman Stephen Olson.
"I think people are looking at every facet of their lives and saying: Is there something I can be doing differently?"
Yeah because the sad fact is that there are a lot of sheepeople out there that are being bombarded with a daily lie that says they are destroying the planet.
The trend is a lot further along in Britain, where there are some 200 so-called natural burial sites."We've done between 80 and 90 burials in the last six or seven years," said Penny Lally of Penwith Woodland Burial Place in Cornwall, England. "I think people like the idea of going back to the earth and creating a tree instead of a crowded cemetery."
So your rotten flesh is equal to you creating a tree? What are we planting people now? Folks, these people are truly nuts. You do whatever you want when you die. I am leaning very much toward Cremation.
Peter
5 comments:
Funniest damn thing I've ever read
Wouldn't my heirs get carbon credits since I'm no longer exhailing co2?
I am not sure why right-wing bloggers find traditional burial so scary, or worthy of sarcastic derision. I presume that it has as much as anything to do with what the Southern hill people around here call being “ignert”. Two syllable “ignorance” in the local dialect also has a double meaning: “uninformed arrogance”. Just for the record, embalming does not stop the body from decaying-it just slows things down.
Most of the 300-400 client families who are involved with our conservation burial ground are not left wing environmentalists; far more are religious conservatives who take Genesis 3:19 very seriously, including a number of Jewish and Green Orthodox families who traditionally neither embalm or go in for cremation (I am in no way accusing you of being an anti-Semite, but you must be unaware that most Jewish and Muslim burials are and always have been “green”). Our new project in Atlanta is with a Trappist monastery, whose monks also go in for more simple whole body burial (the monks are buried in their vestments, without caskets, by the way).
Of those not motivated on religious grounds, a major issue is cost savings on the total funeral, hardly a nutty left wing idea. While these cost savings also translate into less toxics in the environment, the cost savings are more motivating for most people. It is a free market for people to choose, and for some, cost is very important..
The idea of your body nurturing plants is an old one. Some Quakers were buried in their gardens by the 1600’s in part to nourish their flowers. You might want to re-read Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, which spends a good bit of time on the general idea of the re-incorporation of the bodies of the dead into living things (like leaves of grass). The idea of taking some comfort in the idea that your dead body will be “pushing up daisies” is neither new nor crazy.
Finally, the idea of using burials to protect natural spaces for people to enjoy (always a bigger deal for me than toxics) is also at least a couple of hundred years old, and should be the darling of libertarians and others who oppose government funded land protection. The “rural cemetery movement” of the early 19th century used private funds (raised in large measure from selling plots) to create natural areas for the public to enjoy (in the days before big city parks, these spaces often charged admission). Fredrick Law Olmstead’s greatest influence in designing Central Park was the example of these cemeteries (including Green Wood in Brooklyn, Mt. Auburn in Boston, and Laurel Hill in Philadelphia). I tell people that the only real innovation of conservation burial is that it employs modern conservation science in its design and long term operating plans.
We do take cremated remains, by the way, so if your head explodes from all of the apparent BS that it is filled with, we will be glad to do your disposition.
Sincerely,
Billy Campbell, MD
President, Memorial Ecosystems
I agree with you Doug, seems I upset Dr. Campbell though. {Smile}
Great question about the carbon credits. {laughing}
Peter
I kind of agree with you all... each person should chose the best possible memorial for him/her, while the green burial does protect and leave natural spaces that continue to revitalize the environment.
There are other alternatives however that you might find more suitable Pete and d.s. I found them here in this documentary, pretty interesting. I believe Billy is in the doc as well, which really showcases his overall purpose in the green burial industry. Really is interesting:
http://bside.com/films/lastingimages/
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