Rest in Green Peace

By Josh Spero

Just when you thought going green could spread no further, (having already rampaged into food, travel, work and play) it now turns up when you are least capable of dealing with it: in death.

If this seems like the last straw – can’t we be left to die in carbon-consuming peace? – do not worry, because help is close at hand. Indeed, luckily for those readers who care about the environment (and their pockets), Islington is at the centre of the latest leap forward in our green evolution, leaving your life as you lived it. The Natural Death Centre, based on a quiet street in Highbury called Blackstock Mews, is a charity that promotes the use of eco-friendly alternatives in funerals and burials.

It’s an area ripe for improvement. Just consider how wasteful funerals are: at least one tree has been sacrificed for the coffin; a hearse that inches along guzzles gas; and crematoria send up filthy smoke every day. They tend to be expensive, too. A Daily Mail article from January 2006 found that an average burial now costs £3,307, while a coffin alone could be £2,850.

If you are an Islington citizen and want to be buried in one of its cemeteries, it will cost you £450 just for the plot, plus £610 if you want to reserve it, and sundry other expenses. In December the council agreed to above-inflation rises on all of these charges, making dying ever dearer.

So a switch to green has environmental and economic sense on its side. Mike Jarvis, who works for the Natural Death Centre, says it is becoming clearer to people that they should consider green funerals.

“Now they’re starting to worry about how often they’re flying, it’s entirely ridiculous to suppose they won’t want to carry that attitude towards funeral provision,” he says.

The Centre, founded in 1994, owes its evangelical pro-environment attitude to its founder, Nicholas Albery. A social innovator, Mr. Albery initially wanted it to campaign for the sort of palliative care Macmillan nurses now provide, but its focus shifted towards the environment because of the fulfillment of its first aim and a change in public interest. When Mr. Albery, once the Green party’s candidate in Kensington and Chelsea and founder of an artists’ commune in Notting Hill, died in a car crash in 2001, he had a green funeral.

The Centre is convinced of a wide interest in its work and to this end has organised the London Green Funeral Exhibition. Taking place on Saturday 28th April in central London, the exhibition will feature panel discussions, talks and workshops about ecologically-positive burials.

Among the debits of a traditional funeral Mike also includes the “toxic sludge” of formaldehyde and arsenic, which seeps into the ground from embalmed bodies, the glues used in coffins and the lack of space in cemeteries. In fact, a Guardian piece from 2000 warned that inner London’s cemeteries would all be full in seven years’ time – today.

The Centre recommends several ways of keeping eco-harmony, including using one of the 200 cemeteries registered with the Association of Natural Burial Grounds (which it founded and administers). The association’s code of practice includes requirements for cemeteries to conserve their environment and to accept biodegradable coffins. Woodland Burials, a member of the association, has four separate ‘woodlands of remembrance’ in south England, and while site prices are slightly more expensive than at Islington’s municipal cemeteries, they do not have the council’s menu of additional services. Even a tree is included.

Cardboard coffins are a Centre favourite. If you are imagining flimsy little grey things that crumple in the rain, you’re wrong: now they are sturdy as anything and come in a variety of dazzling designs. ecocoffins.com offers one covered with autumn leaves, or another whose lid is a bright sky and sides are a field of poppies. They are also generally much cheaper than wood coffins; at peacefunerals.co.uk you can get them from £95. You need not just go with cardboard: bamboo coffins start at £259, willow ones at £400.

As if to make your decision even harder, if you do not want to be buried, you don’t have many green cremation options, as the smoke given off is harmful to the environment. Sherwood Forest Crematorium in Nottinghamshire is a positive exception, having recently installed filters to rid the smoke of dangerous heavy metal particles.

The Natural Death Centre’s campaign has not gone unnoticed. “I’m working with the Department of Constitutional Affairs on producing a booklet concerning guidelines for burial operators,” says Mike Jarvis. “We had this code of practice and the next thing I knew they were running up and down Westminster shouting, ‘This is the model of how it should be done!’”

There is a persuasive case to be made for going green post mortem. Even if you do not care about the environmental advantages, cost considerations could well sway you. Green ceremonies are also more unique, as you are opting out of the regular funeral conveyor belt.

Talk of green burials may initially seem a shocking intrusion into one of the few areas left untouched by environmental meddling, but it is really just the logical conclusion of a process many of us are currently involved in. When you consider that we now spend so much of our lives preventing pollution, there is no good reason why we should do the opposite in death.