Dust to dust Green burials — no embalming, rapid decomposition — are gaining ground… and giving back to it, too By: AV Kitching Posted: 5:10 PM CDT Monday, Apr. 29, 2024

Adriano Valentin was passionate about the natural world. An animal lover, he believed in taking care of the planet and all the creatures who live on it.

He drove an electric car. He composted his waste. He faithfully recycled, and tried his best to reuse and repurpose household items.

When Valentin, 80, was diagnosed with a terminal form of pancreatic cancer, he reached for a newspaper cutting his wife Jane Dick, 71, had snipped and tucked into a bookshelf. The article mentioned Quinn Hunter, a local funeral director offering natural burials with minimal environmental impact.

“When he found out he was terminal, he pulled the cutting out, gave it to me and said, ‘Let’s talk to her,’” Dick says.

Valentin wanted his burial to be an extension of who he was as a person.

“A natural burial appealed to him because we are always trying to live lighter on the earth. We’re not saints, by any stretch of the imagination, but we believe that small things add up and that you have to set a good example. The green burial was just another way,” Dick says.

---

A green burial harkens back to the oldest form of interment, where a deceased person is simply placed in the ground, without any chemicals, preservatives or adornments, and covered with soil.

After death the body is washed, then wrapped in a simple shroud. It is then placed in a biodegradable shroud or casket, in a grave dug 1.7 metres (5-1/2 feet) deep; closer to the surface to ensure it is more bioavailable to fungi, plants and animals.

There are no headstones or footstones to mark the grave. Instead, the land above it is kept natural, seeded with native plants and flowers.

It’s a return to the old ways, says Richard Rosin, funeral director and president of the Green Burial Society of Canada.

In the last three years Rosin has conducted 22 green funerals in Manitoba and has pre-planned eight.

A staunch advocate of green burials, Rosin believes once we are dead, we are meant to return to the earth in as natural a way as possible so our composting bodies become an energy source for the planet.

As our body decays, it nourishes the earth, the nutrients within sustaining plants and other wildlife.

Embalming a body with formaldehyde — one key difference between green and traditional burials — slows down the process of decay. The embalming chemical can leach into the groundwater and pollute it.

Another difference is the receptacles used to contain the body. In a green burial, the container holding the body is made from biodegradable materials, which are easily sourced from local makers. They are often also more reasonably priced.

In a conventional burial, bodies are often interred in elaborate wooden caskets with metal handles. Some people are buried in caskets made of steel, bronze or copper. There is also the choice of having a grave liner, made from concrete or plastic, into which the casket is placed.

“There are better ways and solutions for end-of-life care in a way that goes back to the basics of what we are used to,” Rosin says. “We are energy when we are dead. That’s what we are and that’s what we ought to be. We are supposed to go back into the system.”

However, as someone who runs a full-service funeral company that offers different options to bereaved families, Rosin, who has been in the industry for nearly 40 years, fully supports families in whatever decisions they make.

“We are energy when we are dead. That’s what we are and that’s what we ought to be. We are supposed to go back into the system.”– Richard Rosin

“I don’t inflict my solutions if people already have one,” he says. “It’s a hard enough time emotionally; people who are grieving certainly don’t need somebody telling them what to do.”

Most of us avoid thinking about death and what happens to our bodies when we die. Giving it thought forces us to confront our own mortality. We have become adept at ignoring the nature of our existence; death is something we are all marching toward.

Death is both one of the most ordinary and most extraordinary events in life, second only to birth.

Owing to our discomfort, an entire industry has grown up around death that provides a sanitized, clinical approach to the very human, sometimes messy and painful nature of dying.

This industry provides a buffer between those who have died and the ones left behind.

“We hand out large amounts of money for companies to deal with our deceased. Preserved with chemicals, ensconced in wooden or metal boxes, our dead lie there as if they are only asleep,” says Trish Penner of Green Cemetery Project Winnipeg.

“We have amazing people in this world related to the death-care industry, related to funerals, related to cemeteries, but then there are also those doing this as big business, profiteering off death. There are both.”

Cultural traditions, religious beliefs and values intersect when it comes to deciding what to do with a person after they are dead.

Budget is another pressing issue.

With spiralling burial costs — Rosin estimates it can cost anything from $8,000 to $10,000 for a conventional burial — around 75 per cent of Canadians choose to be cremated. In Manitoba a simple, or direct, cremation can be anything from $1,000 to $3,600.

“Yes, it will be cheaper to do a cremation,” Penner agrees. “A green burial is not the cheapest option, but often most environmentally friendly options aren’t.”

But our mindset is shifting. People are becoming more willing to engage in conversation about green burials and its ecological benefits.

Penner’s mission is to establish a green cemetery in Manitoba that adheres to the five principles of the Green Burial Society of Canada (see box).

When she first started the Green Cemetery Project Winnipeg, there were only two registered green cemeteries in Canada. Today there are 14, scattered across British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Nova Scotia.

For Penner, it’s all about changing how we view cemeteries — not as a manicured field full of headstones, but a place where nature can thrive.

“The one point that people sometimes make is they don’t want to have a gravesite dedicated to them indefinitely, and that the land could find another purpose,” she says. “I think with a green burial, some of that is addressed, in that for our site, we are not planning to have grave markers, like a headstone, at each site. Instead we will be creating a wild, natural space that allows the natural ecosystem, including plants and animals, to make this space their own.”

She anticipates there will be paths with benches for resting and sitting areas for reflection.

Penner is currently testing a piece of land 50 kilometres outside Winnipeg to see if it will be suitable for the cemetery she has in mind. She and her team have been looking for land for nearly three years and while they are eager to start the process, there are still a number of hurdles in their way.

“We have to find something that would work in terms of RM bylaws, support of residents in the area for this project, proximity to Winnipeg, water table or flooding in the area throughout all seasons, and characteristics about the land that would complicate digging graves, such as tree roots or bedrock, and it falling within our budget capabilities,” she says.

Penner plans on basing her grave options on the City of Winnipeg’s price structure, which falls in the range of $2,350 to $2,950. There will be additional costs, such as the opening and closing of the grave, and the possibility of a group memorial marker, which allows the family of the deceased to place a plaque on a dedicated wall.

“But you don’t have to buy a grave liner, you don’t have to buy a grave vault, we won’t have the option of large headstones and footstones,” she explains of the site, which would allow burial in shrouds or biodegradable caskets. “Even the casket will not be as expensive, because you won’t be using embellished and stained wood boxes.”

---

In Brookside Cemetery, among the oldest and largest garden cemeteries in Western Canada, plans are afoot for a dedicated green burial site.

This spring, the city’s naturalist services branch, working with cemeteries administrator Brett Shenback, is naturalizing a small piece of land at the municipal cemetery, which is a National Historic Site.

Previously a conventional lawn, it will be replaced with Prairie grasses. Shenback hopes the native grasses will be well-established by 2025 and that soon after the cemetery will be able to offer green burials in that specific area.

The pilot project is a way of testing the waters; if there is more demand for these kinds of burials, the city will look at expanding its green burial sites in the future.

“Edmonton and Calgary have established a green burial section in their municipal cemeteries and they have been really popular,” Shenback says.

“There is a growing segment of the population who live their lives mindful of the environment. They want a green burial that aligns with their personal values … I am seeing more of this interest today than I did five years ago.”

Brookside currently offers a hybrid solution for those who would like to be buried in as natural a way as possible.

Municipalities coming on-board the green burial idea are moving in the right direction, Rosin says. While those working within the funeral industry are able to provide for everything else, they cannot offer cemetery space.

“The cemetery industry has to realign their thinking and the city doing it is a huge start,” he say. “They have a very strong municipal responsibility to the environment. Other cemeteries will be able to see that cemeteries are not just headstones; there are opportunities to do other things with a green cemetery.”

---

On 8 March, Adriano Valentin was buried.

In the hours after he died Valentin’s body was washed by his sister-in-law and niece, and he was dressed in clean clothes before being picked up by the funeral home.

At the funeral home, Valentin’s body was refrigerated. Before burial he was wrapped in a shroud and placed on a biodegradable tray before being driven in a hearse to his final resting place.

“Because his body was on a tray, those of us in attendance were pallbearers. We all carried him to the grave. Some people would find that difficult, but for me it was comforting. Because I was accompanying him, I found it very pure and beautiful,” Valentin’s wife Jane Dick says.

“There was no casket, there was no box — I was saying goodbye to a person. For me, being involved in those small ways with his burial was very intimate. It was also healing.

“I lost the greatest love of my life, but it was comforting to have that intimate goodbye.”

av.kitching@freepress.mb.ca