Cemetery crisis in America: Funeral industry adopts environmentally friendly burial solutions

 

Cemetery crisis in America

Cemetery crisis in America: Funeral industry adopts environmentally friendly burial solutions

The funeral services sector in a number of US states is suffering from a crisis of running out of space to allocate more graves in some public cemeteries.
Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York, may have found a solution to this crisis, according to a new report in The Wall Street Journal.

This cemetery, which is one of the historic cemeteries in the Brooklyn neighborhood and covers an area of ​​478 acres, has begun to suffer, like other cemeteries in the United States, from a lack of space to accommodate the burial of more dead.

The cemetery is currently employing a German businessman who officials believe has a practical and rewarding solution that provides an increase in land area and at the same time generates profits for the cemetery's management by converting the remains of the dead into agricultural soil.

The Wall Street Journal report says that this process, which is not entirely new to American society and is known as "natural organic decomposition," relies primarily on using bacteria present in the deceased's own body to transform human tissue into agricultural soil.

The report explained that this process is carried out by placing the deceased in a tightly sealed container, lined with clover, straw, and hay, with the container equipped with a special system that regulates airflow, temperature, and humidity, and then nature takes its course in transforming the deceased's body into agricultural soil.
Microorganisms break down the body of the deceased, with the exception of the bones, which the project managers grind up and turn into organic fertilizer.

This process is an alternative and environmentally friendly burial method, as Greenwood's plan is to utilize the nutrient-rich material that the deceased's body turns into in order to plant more trees and fields, which positively impacts the cemetery's financial situation without the need to occupy additional spaces.

Joseph Sharap, vice president of horticulture for the company that manages Greenwood Cemetery, told the Wall Street Journal: "This approach aims to combine revenue collection with environmental regeneration."

The administrators of Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn intend to officially launch this idea, starting with the use of 18 compost containers from the Berlin-based startup company, MainErdi, which has the idea of ​​turning the deceased's body into agricultural soil.

It will not be easy for the German company and its founder, Pablo Metz, who hopes to spread this practice among more Americans, starting in Brooklyn, given the spread of similar companies that apply the idea of ​​"human composting" throughout the United States.

In explaining the method by which the memory of the deceased will be honored, Myra Joshi, president of Greenwood Cemetery and former deputy mayor of New York City, said that the idea of ​​allocating areas for each deceased person to hold the memories left by their relatives is currently being explored as a form of mourning.

According to the report, the “baby boomer generation,” which includes those born roughly between 1946 and 1964, and is the wealthiest generation in the West, was and still is open to changing cultural norms associated with various ceremonies, including funeral rites.

As this generation ages, the U.S. burial industry is likely to see a significant influx of money and new ideas, similar to the idea of ​​turning the deceased's body into agricultural soil, including biodegradable coffins, or creating three-dimensional models of the deceased to be displayed instead of a headstone as memorials.
Prior to Brooklyn, 14 US states had already adopted the process of converting bodies into human compost, including Washington state since 2019.

Outside the United States, parliaments in European countries, including Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and the United Kingdom, are considering implementing this approach.

On the economic level, the process of converting human remains into compost is an emerging industry, after it became legal in a significant number of US states.
According to WHYY, proponents of this idea see it as an environmentally friendly solution, and more viable than traditional options such as burial or cremation.

Hayley Morris, a spokeswoman for Earth Funeral, which owns and operates facilities to convert remains into compost in Washington and Nevada, says that traditional burial may require the use of non-biodegradable materials, such as metals and concrete, and that the liquid commonly used in embalming contains carcinogenic substances.

She continued, saying: “The burning of the deceased’s body also relies on fossil fuels, and results in the emission of gases that contribute to the worsening smoke crisis and enhance the phenomenon of global warming, as the emissions of each burning process are equivalent to those resulting from driving a car for a distance of 600 miles.”
In contrast to these environmental damages, Hayley believes that relying on converting the deceased's body into human compost does not cause any of these problems, but rather contributes to the development of soil resources and increases its fertility.