HOW GREEN IS YOUR CEMETERY ?

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HOW GREEN IS YOUR CEMETERY?
by JANE BOGNER
SUNDAY, August 08, 2004

A recent question to Gary Bogue’s animal column in a local paper was “Where do all the birds go when they die?” Thousands of birds, squirrels, opossums, rats, fish, deer, etc. die every day but our landscape doesn’t appear to be littered with smelly carcasses. Mother nature has super efficient ways with dealing with all this wild waste.

Conserving land and land use are big issues these days with local cities proposing residential and commercial development in what was once deemed open space between cities or on the waterfront. Last week, a parcel of local farmland near Dixon was sold for use as a national cemetery.

In the 1880s, a movement was started to remove all cemeteries from San Francisco because the land was too valuable to be dedicated to the dead. Only the Presidio cemetery and a few small cemeteries can now be found within those city limits.

All of this made me think about my own demise. I have often joked that no burial is needed for me, just dump me into my compost bin. In a sense that is just what is happening around the world.

A return to natural burials was started a decade ago by the Association of Natural Burial Grounds in London. Natural Cemeteries help conserve land, water and other resources. It’s an alternative to the $20 billion-a-year mortuary cemetery business with their lush grass carpeted cemeteries that are dependent on a high use of water and pesticides.

Ramsey Creek Preserve is the first natural cemetery in the United States. It was created in 1996 by Dr. Billy Campbell in Westminster, South Carolina. Simple biodegradable caskets (or none) are used and bodies are not embalmed as that delays decomposition. Wild flowers and simple engraved flat stones mark the burial sites in this wooded area. Campbell’s company, Memorial Ecosystems (www.memorialecosystems.com), sets aside 25 percent of the burial price for conservation, nature classes and plant surveys.

The green cemetery movement is now as close as Marin County. Trust for Public Land, the environmental group that rescued the Marin Headlands and much of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, is considering seeking a conservation easement for such a project. The southern Marin County site has a historic but fading cemetery dating back to the 1880s holding early settlers from the Sausalito Land and Ferry Company.

This new green cemetery would included high-tech mapping tools to help mourners find their loved ones. Their perpetual care fund would be used to build trails, restore habitat, and conserve more land.

Interestingly, the state of California does not require that dead people be embalmed or put into caskets. According to the Cemetery and Funeral Bureau, people need to be buried 18 inches deep and an appropriate distance from moving water, depending on the hydrology of the site.

The Association of Natural Burial Grounds stated that there is little risk of infectious disease, since most pathogens (even HIV and Ebola) die soon after the person does.

For those who prefer burial at sea, Eternal Reefs (www.eternalreefs.com) will mix your cremated remains with concrete to be placed at an artificial reef located near the Atlantic or Gulf coast.

SCHOOL SUPPLIES AVAILABLE

Several sets of the Trail Blazer math book series are available free to teachers. They are stored in VALCORE’s ReUse Barn. Check the ReUse page on our website for more free things.

VALLEJO COMPOSTING CLASSES

VALCORE conducts free backyard and earthworm composting classes on the third Saturday of each month at 38 Sheridan from 10am to Noon. The next class is August 21. Two composting bins will be given away at each class to two Vallejo residents.

VALCORE Recycling Vice President Jane Bogner's "A Sorted Affair" is published every other week in the Times-Herald, Community Outlook Section. For recycling information call Genie Kaggerud, VALCORE Recycling manager at 645-8258 or visit www.VALCORErecycling.org.