So, I'm not super green or anything, but I try to be environmentally conscious in small ways. When possible I buy organic, and I've attempted to cut down on my plastic waste a bit. I only use cold water when I wash my clothes. Nothing really extreme.

I also don't drive, but I don't really think of that as an effort to be environmentally friendly because my reasons for that don't have much to do with the environment. I just don't like cars.

Anyway, I found out today about green cemeteries. I absolutely love the idea of it. It's always seemed weird to me that we have cemeteries where we make it as hard as possible for any actual decomposition to happen, what with embalming and these big elaborate caskets. I mean, admittedly, if you had asked me on a random day before now what I thought some very environmentally unfriendly practices were, I probably wouldn't have thought of burials, but they actually are for the majority of people. It takes a lot of water and maintenance to keep cemeteries looking so clean and er... well, green in the sense that the grass is alive.

I guess the cemetery my grandparents are buried in in Hawaii might not use as much water because it's got a different type of grass, but most of the ones I've seen (admittedly not that many, maybe three or four?) have lawns that need watering.

But yeah, with a green cemetery you're taking away the stuff that's unnatural and bad for the environment as much as possible. You can still do a casket, but it won't be those solid kinds that look like they cost over a thousand dollars and won't rot for a century. The one closest to me looks like it's Fernwood Cemetery, where you can engrave small boulders instead of having tombstones, or not even have a marker. They do GPS stuff to help find burial sites. :0

Oh yeah, and green burials can be a LOT cheaper because you're not paying for all that embalming and fancy casket and stuff.

I definitely didn't expect to get excited about the prospect of my own funeral today, haha, but this does seem pretty cool.

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By the way I finally changed it so that it's actually possible to see links in my entries without hovering over them. My code was all messed up and I had no idea for the longest time until I tried to change it just now. >.> Now active links are the fine shade of kiwi to be more visible, though they still turn maroon when you hover over them. I went with the fabulous "gray42" for visited links.

Green cemeteries seem like a great idea! I've always been bothered by the amount of land cemeteries take up. Each person has to be buried six feet down, you can't stack or share plots... You're not supposed to walk on the graves? I don't know. It's a dead body, it seems like such a waste of space.

I'm getting cremated and don't really want a plot or a casket or any of that ridiculously expensive stuff. Just burn me up and toss me out. I'll be dead, I won't care!
» Amelie on 2013-03-05 02:32:22

My uncles girlfriend just got a job at a funeral parlor as an embalmer. They makes lotssss of money. And she has some CRAZY stories. One of them unrepeatable, almost.

One interesting thing you can do with your body when you die is donate it to the FBI body farm: http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2009/july/bodyfarm_070709
» Amelie on 2013-03-05 03:17:56

Love the idea of green cemeteries. I agree w/ amelie, burn me up dude. Over it.

The idea of a casket weirds me out. Forever encased in a box. I'd rather be set free. It's crazy expensive + environmentally unfriendly. Bummer.
» dont-see on 2013-03-05 04:45:49

The idea of a green cemetery is a good one. My plan is to be cremated, as is my mom's and sister's. My step-dad was. My dad was going to be, but since my grandparents paid for the funeral, he's buried in the family plot. I definitely think green cemeteries are a good alternative to cremation if a person still wants to do a traditional ceremony.
» LostSoul13 on 2013-03-05 10:44:01

Oddly enough, I just heard about green cemeteries for the first time a few weeks ago in an episode of Bones. I can't remember if it was the funeral home director or the ex-husband who killed the interred woman and friend, but that's... not important, now.

I haven't particularly studied or looked it up, but history and story behind different burial practices is really interesting. With all the myths, legends and beliefs surrounding the dead and the here-after have been a bigger influence in such rites much more than consideration of the science that happens with you+ground+whatever.
» invisible on 2013-03-05 11:01:16

HAHA I got a little crazy with making up the names.
» middaymoon on 2013-03-06 12:23:37

Green Cemeteries! :D

I remember hearing a joke on some talk show about putting human bodies on their sides like dominos so that it's more space-efficient. xp

And if I remember from Six Feet Under, caskets and such are quite the expense :0
» feelthesound902 on 2013-03-06 01:15:52

I think I'd be cremated. But I would make sure I had a well marked "tombstone" because I've tried to do genealogy work with my dad and it's always much easier if people have well-documented grave sites. I'd probably put as much information as possible: where I was born, where I died, who I was related to, a picture of me, and how I died, to help generations of future family historians. And I'd carve it in granite, not limestone, because after a couple of centuries of acid rain, you can't read anything carved into limestone.
» Zanzibar on 2013-03-06 08:13:44

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