By the middle of the 20th century, death had left the American home.
Most Americans died in hospitals.
Most families mourned their dead in funeral homes, not in the family parlor.
Most people were buried in hardwood or metal caskets sealed in concrete vaults in cemeteries where the grass was always neat and green.
The changes weren’t cheap.
Typical funeral costs rose as more funeral homes sold hardwood or metal caskets, and cemeteries required underground concrete vaults to hold them.
By 1963, the high price of dying was drawing attention.
Jessica Mitford’s book, “The American Way of Death,” charged that the American funeral industry was taking advantage of grieving families with unnecessary expenses.
Mitford’s work led to congressional hearings but few changes to funeral practices and prices.
Yet criticism of the American way of death also began to resonate in other areas.
In 1962, Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring described the damage caused to birds and other wildlife by toxic chemicals and pesticides.
Citizens and scientists noticed, and the government responded with new policies protecting air, water, and wildlife.
By 1970, as Americans celebrated the first Earth Day, environmental issues were becoming mainstream concerns.
It’s no surprise that attention eventually turned to the environmental cost of conventional burial practices:
Millions of board feet of hardwood and tens of thousands of tons of metals for caskets
Tons of reinforced concrete for underground vaults.
The perpetual mowing and application of pesticides and weedkillers.
Ken West, who later designed the first “woodland burial” site in Great Britain, saw the damage firsthand in the early 1960s.
As a young worker at an English cemetery, he was assigned to the chemical spraying team for lawn maintenance.
He described the results: First, the wildflowers disappeared, then the voles. Soon, the cemetery landscape was, in his words, “dead as a dodo.”
By 1993, West was able to make a difference.
As bereavement services manager for Carlisle Cemetery in northwestern England, he designed a new cemetery section as a “woodland burial” area dedicated to simple, natural burials.
In this area, families bury their loved ones with no toxic embalming fluids and use shrouds, containers, or simple coffins that are, like the body, biodegradable.
There are no gravestones, but families can plant a tree and place a brass memorial plaque within a walled seating area.
Beneath the trees, bluebells, daffodils, and snowdrops bloom in springtime. There is no grass to mow.
With this woodland burial section, Carlisle became Britain's first natural burial ground. The country now has more than 270.
Meanwhile, a small-town physician and his wife in South Carolina had a broader vision for natural burial.
Billy and Kimberly Campbell wanted to combine natural burials with land conservation — to create “nature preserves that allow for the sacred burial of human remains,” as their website describes them.
Their company, Memorial Ecosystems, Inc., opened Ramsey Creek Preserve in 1998, the first conservation cemetery in the U.S. Since then, the Campbells have helped set best practices for conservation burials and co-founded the Conservation Burial Alliance.
The Green Burial Council, organized in 2005, promotes green burials and certifies funeral homes and burial sites that want to provide them.
It recognizes three levels of green burial cemeteries.
Hybrid cemeteries are the most common. These conventional cemeteries, like Carlisle Cemetery in England, offer a natural burial option.
Natural burial grounds allow only natural burials.
Conservation burial grounds are natural burial grounds that pledge to preserve, enhance, and protect the natural habitat and the property with easements or deed restrictions.
Natural burial is growing in popularity. As of December 2023, the Green Burial Council listed 60 certified hybrid cemeteries, 31 natural cemeteries, and 11 conservation cemeteries.
The council also provides names of funeral homes certified in natural burial practices in the United States and Canada. The U.S. list is here and here, and the Canada list is here.
Wow, who knew that the UK had 270 natural burial grounds. Carlisle is in the next county over from where I live. I'm going to look into if there are any in mine. Fascinating info and thanks for sharing these resources Sara.
I think this is a great trend. Thanks for the info, Sara.