Institute for Rural Journalism
Americans may not be able to choose how and when they die, but they can make arrangements for what happens to their body afterward. For many people, the challenges involved in creating and paying for interment have led them away from traditional funeral preparations such as embalming, a casket and a plot of land.
“More Americans are choosing burials in which everything is biodegradable,” reports Paula Span of The New York Times.
(Larkspur Conservation photo)
Although a consumer survey conducted by the National Funeral Directors Association “found that fewer than 10% of respondents would prefer a green burial (compared to 43% favoring cremation and 24% opting for conventional burial), more than 60% said they would be interested in exploring green and natural alternatives,” Span writes.
While some survey participants wanted to be buried naturally because it’s environmentally friendly, “many survey participants attributed their interest in green burial to its lower cost,” Span explains. “The median price of a funeral with burial in 2023 was about $10,000, not including the cemetery plot or a monument.” Cremation requires fossil fuels and costs roughly $6,300.
Green burial expenses do depend on location, but they are generally cheaper than traditional burial and cremation costs.
Span reports, “About 40 miles outside Nashville, a green burial at Larkspur Conservation costs $4,000, including the gravesite and just about everything else, except, if the family wants one, a flat, engraved native stone.”
As one might expect, a green funeral is held in the woods where family and friends “tend to walk the trail to the burial site wearing denim and hiking boots, not black suits,” Span adds. In some cases, mourners help lower the body into the ground and help shovel dirt over the grave.
John Christian Phifer, Larkspur’s founder, gave Span a list of green funeral benefits: “No chemical embalming, no steel casket, no concrete vault. . . . It’s what keeps forests from becoming subdivisions.”