The author is a contributing columnist, based in Chicago
Risa Morimoto and her siblings dressed their 84-year-old mother, Noriko, in her sister’s kimono, lovingly lifted her inert body from the bed where she had died, slipped her into a simple wooden box filled with flowers and messages, and carried her out of her home for the last time.
Sometimes mourning rituals are dictated down to the smallest detail by history, such as the recent funeral of Queen Elizabeth II, which captivated millions around the world. But increasingly, American funeral directors say they are adding more eco-friendly and in-home funeral options for families like the Morimotos who want to create their own customs and write their own rules. As more American families try to live sustainably, they’re looking for greener ways to die and taking more control of the funeral process, says Amy Cunningham, director of Fitting Tribute Funeral Services, which specializes in green burials and home funerals.
According to a report released this year by the US National Funeral Directors Association, 60.5% of respondents would be “interested in exploring ‘green’ funeral options” for environmental, cost or other reasons, compared to 55, 7% in 2021. The NFDA says it’s impossible to know how many US bodies are disposed of in a “green” fashion because national statistics don’t make that distinction.
Opponents of traditional burial claim that conventional embalming fluids and the concrete used to prevent graves from collapsing when a body decomposes are bad for the environment, while cremation, especially in older crematoria, creates harmful carbon emissions.
Jack Davenport is a funeral director in northern Illinois near my home. When I visited him recently, he gave me a coffin made locally from banana leaves. At the cemetery outside of Detroit where I own land, they just opened a “green burial” section where I can be buried wrapped in my favorite blanket if I wish. The coffins are made of willow, seagrass, bamboo and other eco-materials; Davenport gives me a recycled paper cremation urn.
Five US states have even recently legalized human composting, which involves the production of soil from human remains. And in 2019, actor Luke Perry was buried in a “mushroom suit” to help him decompose.
But Jimmy Olson, NFDA spokesman and funeral director in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, says many families don’t have the option of a truly ‘green’ burial because there’s no cemetery nearby. of them who allow it. He estimates that only 5% of his business is completely green, but half “have a green connotation”. All of its wooden coffins are made from local products made locally, which reduces the emissions associated with their importation. The pandemic has done nothing to make things greener, he says, as it has dramatically increased cremation rates – his has gone from 60% pre-Covid to 75%.
What explains the growing taste for home funerals? Morimoto, whose father died at the start of the pandemic without her even being allowed to see his body, cherishes the practical experience of her mother’s death. She told me the process of washing and dressing her was “cathartic”.
Sarah Riley, whose family held an eco-friendly funeral for her mother in July, agrees. She says, “Having this direct role in the burial process has been very cathartic. . . It goes back to how things were done before we rented everything out to non-family members. Her family bought a cardboard coffin, decorated it with magic markers and flowers, loaded it onto a hand-drawn carriage and buried her mother in an ‘estate plot’, which will serve another body once his has broken down.
For my part, despite my pre-purchased land, I lean towards the kind of “shades of green” funeral that Olson offers: once a year, he takes a boat for those who want their ashes scattered in Lake Michigan. . Cremation may have its drawbacks, but at least my body won’t take up space.
He promises to spray me at the spot on the horizon where the sun will rise on my birthday each year – and give my children the GPS coordinates. They would much rather do that than dress me up and wrap me up at home, or anything else closer and personal.