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Eco funerals or green burials are growing rapidly in popularity with many people wanting an eco sustainable funeral reflective of how their own values towards the environment. Green burials offer an ecologically sensitive alternative to the wasteful and expensive traditional funeral. The typical overall cost for a traditional funeral in the US is on average $6500. The green alternative is much lower in costs with the average being only $2300.

Every year, American cemeteries bury a staggering amount of resources: 30 million board feet of wood used in caskets; 90,272 tons of steel in caskets; 14,000 tons of steel used for vaults; 2700 tons of copper and bronze in caskets; 1.6 million tons of concrete; and 827,060 gallons of embalming fluid.

A green funeral seeks to offer a better way of not polluting the environment while at the same time honoring the dead with a living tribute in their name. A eco friendly burial is one where the body is interred without being embalmed or being placed in a concrete vault. A plain wooden casket is used but the choice of a cardboard coffin or one made out of bamboo, wicker or bamboo is available. The coffin is buried in a shallow grave in a special location identifiable by GPS coordinates. The only marker is not a granite headstone but a tree that will be sustained by the body of the deceased.

Green funerals usually take place in conservation areas such as woodlands or forests in the process of restoration and conservation. Woodland burials are growing in popularity and green cemeteries are doubling every year to the demand from ecologically aware consumers. The Green Burial Council is an American non profit organization that is a clearinghouse of information on green funerals.

One of its goals is to use burial as a means of restoring and conserving natural areas throughout the United States. The aim of the group is to inform people on the life sustaining alternative funeral practices and products. It also has a list of states that allow green burials as well as a list of states with green cemeteries that meet the standards of the GBC.

A web search for green burial products can yield such things as bio degradable coffins and caskets, funeral shrouds and even gourds for those people who wish to be cremated.

Before you plan an ecologically sound funeral, check with the laws of your state to see if they permit green burials. Remember not all states will permit these types of burials.

If your state does allow green burials, then how do you know that your final resting place will be a green one? A green cemetery should follow a number of rules and practices to ensure the viability of a woodland grave site. It should have an established conservation organization or committee to oversee and administer the area. All areas in the cemetery should have had a geological, hydrological and geographical survey done. How are the graves dug, by hand or backhoe? The accepted way is by a shallow hand dug grave. How will the graves be marked and located? These are the questions that will have to be researched further before ecologically sustainable funerals can be planned.

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