10 Ways to Plan a Green Funeral

While concrete burial vaults are required by most cemeteries, they are not required by law in most states.

A lot of folks will say they don’t care what happens to their bodies after they die, but they do care about the health and enjoyment of those who will survive them.  How about a Green Funeral?  Here are 10 ways to plan a greener funeral.

1. Give your business to a Green funeral home.
Just like in our own homes, a funeral home has unlimited opportunity to demonstrate a commitment to the environment.  Give your patronage to a funeral home that doesn’t just offer a green burial service, but demonstrates a commitment to sustainability with low water toilets, low/zero VOC paints and finishes, energy-efficient lighting & appliances, carpet made from sustainable or recycled materials, rain water collection, window flower boxes, composting, rain gardens, etc.  Cress Funeral Homes in Madison, WI is one such funeral home that has taken every opportunity in funeral home improvement to make smart choices for the environment.

2. Don’t use a concrete burial vault.
The law does not require burial vaults in Wisconsin (or most states).  There are many cemeteries that do not require them.  If your plot is in a cemetery that requires a vault, there are recycled plastic products on the market, but with limited availability.  Your funeral director can help find answers to these questions.

3. Don’t use a steel casket.
Save steel for cars and buildings where it will serve a long and useful life and be recycled again and again.  Wood is a renewable natural resource.  Consider lower-impact, more sustainable woods like pine and poplar over more expensive hardwoods like maple and mahogany.

4. Consider alternatives to cremation carefully.
Cremation has a carbon footprint of 350 to 600 lbs. of CO2 and is responsible for a significant amount of toxic air-born pollution including mercury pollution.  Consider a natural return to your earthly elements with a burial in a locally-sourced wooden casket with a biodegradable interior and non-toxic wood finish.  If cremation is your preference for any number of reasons, go with a wooden cremation casket that will reduce the fossil fuel used by 10-20%.

5. Forgo embalming or use non-formeldehyde alternatives.
Embalming is not required by law.  The law requires some form of preservation which includes refrigeration or embalming.  Dry ice can be used to satisfy refrigeration requirements during a family viewing or service.  There are also alternatives to formeldehyde embalming fluids.  Ask your funeral director about green alternatives to conventional embalming fluid.

6. Find a natural burial ground or conservation cemetery.
Wisconsin has a number of traditional cemeteries opening up natural burial areas and there are a few new cemeteries pursuing conservation status.  The Natural Path Sanctuary in Verona, WI is one example of a conservation cemetery.  This woodland burial ground must preserve the natural habitat for both flora and fauna and prohibits vaults and non-biodegradables including your choice of casket or burial shroud and burial clothing—no embalming, no metal, no polyester.

7. Reduce travel requirements.
Have your visitation and funeral service in the same place at the same time.  No sense making your family drive all over the place.  Also, carefully consider what your wishes are for family and friends who must travel from far away.  Air travel is a big carbon polluter and, if avoided, can save a lot of energy.  It’s your funeral and if you’d rather your distant family raise a toast to you over the phone, let them know this is how you feel.

8.  Avoid cut flowers.
The cut flower industry is rife with conspiracy about wasteful practices that consume water, use pesticides and herbicides, and refrigerated air freight to transport fresh cut flowers around the planet.  Consider specifying locally-sourced cut flowers, locally grown potted flowers, or other creative alternatives.

9.  Plant a few trees.
Nobody can argue that planting trees is a good thing.  Plant trees every year and teach your children the importance of planting trees.  Support the Arbor Day Foundation and ask family and friends plant trees in your memory. Or pre-plan your funeral today and we will plant 100 trees this year, and every year, for you as part of our Plant it Forward program!

10.  Plan your Funeral.
If the environment is important to you, don’t leave these choices to someone else.  There’s no better way to ensure that your funeral has minimal impact on the environment.  Do you homework, meet with a funeral director, and write your funeral plan.  It doesn’t matter if you are 64 or 24.  It’s never too soon to have peace of mind that your funeral will be consistent with your values.

The Path to Black is Paved with Green and Gold

The Golden Circle of Motivation centers on Why.

The funeral business is changing and that is evident in several trends: decreasing death rate, increasing life expectancy, increasing cremation rate, rising employer costs, rising cost of health care, decreasing asset to debt ratios, and man more.  Every one of these topics is the subject of news articles and op-ed pieces in every publication on-line and off-line from which we opt to fill our minds.  There's no shortage of opinions on the profitability (or lack thereof) in death care service or where the industry is headed next.  One thing for sure is that for those fifth and sixth generation funeral directors, operating a funeral service business today is nothing like it was five generations ago when cash and bartering were the primary means of transacting business.
In a previous installment of this column I wrote about the Golden Circle of Motivation as presented by Simon Sinek in a TED talk.  In about ten minutes Mr. Sinek makes a compelling argument for any commercial business to re-invent our marketing message to focus on why we do what we do.  Answers like "to make money" are not valid.  A business makes money to exist, it does not exist to make money.  Mr. Sinek uses breathing as an analogy.  We breath to live, not the other way around.  Typically most employees in a business can explain what they do.  Very few can explain how they do it.  And even fewer know why.  For some firms, nobody can articulate why their firm exists.  But those who can explain why, and can explain effectively, already have their go-to-market message.

In these contemporary times of volatile markets, political challenges, and ever-rising cost of doing business, it is hard enough to keep a business in The Black.  Add to our challenges this new breed of consumerism with the loyalty of Benedict Arnold and the attention span of Sponge Bob exposed to more information in a day today than a person was exposed to in an entire month in 1881 when President James Garfield was shot by Charles Guiteau.

How might the funeral industry today adapt?  Can we leverage our values in sustainability in our go-to-market messaging to earn more loyalty with a contemporary consumer?  Could Green & Gold lead us to The Black?

My first coffin was for Grandpa.

Ten years ago I designed and built my first casket with my family for my Grandfather.  Nine years ago we sold our first "green” casket kit online.  About six years ago we discovered, almost by accident, that people were more interested in why I decided to build caskets than how we build them.  Like many businesses, we have a web site that describes what we are selling.  For a short period I thought it clever to describe in great detail how we build caskets.  Then about four years ago I listened to Simon Sinek's TED talk and things haven't been the same since we focused our messaging on why.  We are using our casket business to plant trees—lots and lots of trees. Ten million, to be exact. This is an easy message for our followers to support and repeat. Sales have more than doubled in each of the three years since we have re-focused our go-to-market messaging on why we build environmentally friendly, non-toxic, and sustainable caskets.

I share this with you and anyone interested enough to re-think their marketing message.  For those of you who are 5th or 6th generation funeral directors, I applaud you.  For those of you just entering this industry, I applaud you.  You are both likely very close to explaining "why" you have remained in, or have recently chosen, this profession.  As for the rest of us… can we quickly and effectively explain "why does my firm exist" or "why am I a funeral director" to a 10 year-old?  Keep in mind that "make money" is a not a valid answer.  Not everyone's answer is the same--and need not be.  Your answer is your own--it is your Golden Circle of Motivation.  Making your motivation transparent for your customers will have a profound impact on both their attention span and their loyalty.

So maybe you get the Gold, but where's the Green in the Black?  I illustrate with my own experience.  I don't build caskets to make money--there are a lot of other ways I could make money, and some are far easier than making caskets.  And I don't just make caskets.  I make sustainable, eco-friendly, non-toxic, locally sourced, carbon-negative caskets because I am fascinated by the challenge of building a business on Smarter Planet ideas.  I plant lots and lots of trees because I believe that nobody can argue that planting trees isn't a great thing.  I source raw materials and manufacture with local talent so that I can create jobs in my community.  This is my passion.  Before listening to Mr. Sinek, I was shy about my passion and kept my motivations private.  I now realize that not only was there no need to hide my motivation. Making my personal motivation transparent has only helped to build trust in personal relationships, longer attention spans, and true loyalty from our clients and followers.

I invite you to find the why in your motivation.  Yes, I admit Green is arguably an already over-played marketing moniker and trend.  It is no longer relevant to a consumer to tout our wares as simply Green--that's not good enough.  Go for the Gold and tell your customers why you do what you do.  Add a little Green to that Gold and you will find yourself on the path to Black.

How Does Cremation Measure in Sustainability?

With each passing year, more Wisconsin families choose cremation over a conventional casketed cemetery burial when it comes to end-of-life choices for our loved ones.  Since 2011 the number of cremations have outnumbered burials in Wisconsin.  What is the impact on our environment?  Are we moving in the right direction?

Before getting into the details of cremations and burials, let’s take note that end-of-life choices are exactly that: choices.  What we choose for ourselves or for our loved ones is a private matter.  Like all choices in our lives, we like to make choices that are consistent with our values.  Our values are formed over a lifetime of experience and do not change quickly or easily.  Our choices, however, can change quickly—especially upon learning new information.  When I listen to people describe their end-of-life plans, I ask questions to better understand their values and offer information that might help individuals make choices in good alignment with their values.

You’re likely reading this blog because preserving natural habitats and sustainable living are held highly in your own core values.  It may alarm you to learn that the act of disposing your earthly human remains could have a larger impact on the planet after your death than all of the activities of a Tibetan’s entire living life!  What’s even worse is that these harmful activities bring no enjoyment or betterment to our lives or those who will survive us.  The environmentally wasteful activities in death care are entirely avoidable.  The good news is that we need not petition our legislature to change laws.  Nor do we have to wait for large corporations to offer alternatives.  Change can happen right now—starting with you and me.  We have the power to make an immediate impact by simply informing ourselves and others of our end-of-life choices and how our choices will impact the environment.

There are three talking points for cremation regarding the environment:  carbon footprint, toxic pollution, and land use.  One public perception is that occupying a cemetery plot wastes valuable land resources that could otherwise be put to better uses.  The reality is that the land used to extract, refine, store, and transport the few pounds of fossil fuel required for a single cremation is significantly larger than the area of a cemetery plot.  Furthermore, the type of land where we extract fossil fuels (natural gas) take us to wildlife habits in precious areas of our world including Alaska, Canada, and the oceans.  And then there is high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing (fracking) for natural gas.  Fracking requires sand which is being mined here in Wisconsin.  Now imagine that cemetery plot—it is minimal in comparison.

On the topic of toxicity, the EPA attributes cremation as the third largest polluter of our waterways with mercury.  Add to this the cocktail of emissions including nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter, mercury, hydrogen fluoride (HF), hydrogen chloride (HCl), NMVOCs, and other heavy metals, in addition to Persistent Organic Pollutants (POP).   For a body that contains metal implants or dental fillings, the impact of incineration releases even more harmful dioxins and mercury.  The United Nations has estimated that 0.2% of the global emission of dioxins and furans are from cremation.  While embalming is not required for direct cremation, circumstances that include a viewing or service prior to cremation often include embalming.  The toxic gases released by cremating an embalmed body are cause for further controversy over the health and environmental impacts of cremation.

Incineration of fossil fuel during a three-hour cremation generates 600 lbs of CO2e.  The carbon footprint of a steel casket is 2000 lbs of CO2e (carbon-dioxide equivalents).  However, a simple wooden locally-made natural burial casket has a footprint less than 50 lbs of CO2e.  A natural burial shroud has an even smaller footprint.  Planting 100 seedling trees can sequester 200 lbs of CO2 in the first year.  If carbon footprint is important to you, and you prefer cremation over a natural burial, consider planting 100 trees that will offset the carbon footprint of your cremation in 3-4 years time.  Don’t wait, plant them now. 

Sustainability in Funeral Service: Six Ways to Make a Real Difference Without Spending a Dime

When it comes to running our businesses, many of us are hesitant to take real steps for positive change to conserve and protect our planet.  Excuses include not knowing where to start and lacking funds to invest in expensive alternatives.  The last few years of Greenwashing in every industry from Tobacco to Tylenol have proven a few things in both marketing strategies and consumer awareness.  First, consumers are genuinely interested in doing the right thing.  People don’t just care about the environment in general, people want to know specifically how their choices in products and services affect the planet in clear and concise measurable terms including biodegradability, carbon footprint, local-sourcing, sustainability, and toxic pollutants. Second, businesses are learning that sustainability has a positive impact on profits. Conservation strategies will not only reduce costs; real and positive changes can generate goodwill in the community and build loyalty with customers. Here are six ways the funeral home can make a measurable impact without spending a dime.  [Spoiler: Offering sustainable alternatives to your families with clever merchandising will add to your bottom line by saving families money on low margin products so they can spend more on higher margin services.]

1.  Stop mowing the lawn.  Seriously.  If you own or work in a funeral home, lawn maintenance and landscaping is a priority with an annual budget to afford contracted services and/or staff to keep your place of business looking well kept and beautiful.  Talk to your landscaper about shifting those same budget dollars to zero-scape your entire outdoors with trees, mulch, and perennials.  Stop using nitrogen-based fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides that cause great harm to your local waterways and the environment.  You can avoid a large investment by changing green lawn to mulch and perennials in small projects.  There’s no need to do it all at once—create a five-year plan and you’ll spend the same dollars you’re already spending.  You’ll know you’re done when you no longer need that lawnmower, and there are no more gas cans, pesticides, or herbicides stored in the garage.  Best part, your neighbors and families will pay you compliments daily on how great your place looks!

2.  Don’t be Greenwashed, yourself.  You’re a customer too.  Whenever you make purchase decisions be mindful of Greenwashing.  The FTC Green Guides say that marketers' claims must be accompanied with qualifications and disclosures that are clear and prominent.  If you cannot immediately understand how or why a product or service is “better for the planet” then ask questions.  Don’t be mislead by qualitative words including Natural, Organic, Biodegradable, and Eco-friendly that are not accompanied by further qualifications that substantiate the marketer’s claims.

3.  Know your caskets & cemeteries.  For families interested in alternatives to a conventional casketed cemetery burial, have information in-hand so that your families can make informed choices consistent with their values.  Know the locations of 2-3 cemeteries that do not require concrete burial vaults or that have designated areas for natural burials.  Have literature in-hand for manufacturers of natural burial caskets and burial shrouds.  (Don’t be Greenwashed—see #2.)

4.  Memorize three cremation talking points.  Land use, carbon footprint, and toxic pollution. Most people who choose cremation as an alternative to a burial have no idea that the land required to extract, refine, transport, and store the few pounds of fossil fuel for a single cremation is far greater than a single cemetery plot.  It is a matter of fact that the carbon footprint of a single cremation ranges between 350 and 600 lbs. of CO2e—that’s the same footprint as burning 17 to 30 gallons of gasoline!  The US EPA reports that cremation is the third-leading contributor of airborne mercury contamination in the US as well as a cocktail of additional harmful pollutants.

5.  Take your cleaners to the cleaners.  Whether you have a cleaning service or perform cleaning duties with your own team, the cleaners in your funeral home almost certainly contain harmful chemicals.  There are effective alternatives that will make your funeral home both safer and cleaner.  Again, don’t be Greenwashed.  Look for commercial cleaning products that are biodegradable and free of phosphates, chlorine, ammonia, and petroleum distillates.  For the ambitious, there is a wealth of resources online for mixing your own cleaners with inexpensive, easy-to-use, natural cleaners such as baking soda, lemon, borax, vinegar, and citrus solvent.

6.  Start your own tree-planting initiative.  Nobody can argue that planting a tree is a good thing. For as little as $1, the Arbor Day Foundation will plant a tree in memory in a National Forest. Talk to your city forester or parks & recreation department about an making annual contribution to plant a few trees in your community.  Plant a few trees every year on your own properties and maintain them well.  Trees add value to your property.  Businesses like UPS are making real investments in tree-planting and are reaping the benefits in goodwill and customer loyalty.  The UPS Foundation planted 1.3 million trees in 2013 and will plant a million more in 2014.