I'm just DYIN' to be Greener!!!

Well, I thought I'd heard it all. Green building. Green cleaning. Green cooking. Green shopping. Green driving. Green sex products for goodness sake! But then, lo and behold, I hear the enevitable, I suppose...

Green DYING??

Hah! It's true. If you die these days, and heck, everyone will, didja know that there's an environmentally friendly way to plan the afterparty so to speak? What's more surprising than that actually, is the findings I came across regarding how un-Earth friendly the average cremation and/or burial really is. It's totally ironic... decaying life forms are supposed to enrich the soil and help the planet's natural cycle, not counteract it! Check this out:

Take cremation. Lots of people choose this option over casket-styles burial because it takes up way less space, or none at all if you sprinkle Great-uncle Bob around outside, or keep him in a jar on the mantle. Crappy thing is, that cremation itself is to blame. I mean, something's gotta give the corpse a hand.. bodies don't just burn themselves. Are we talking fossil fuels here? Unfortunately, that's the truth.. depending on what kind of facility you use, and how old it is, your last moments in one piece could be spent consuming precious (and dirty, dirty) fossil fuels. Older facilities tend to use more, but newer ones eat up gas all the same. What a way to go!

... and while we're on the topic of fumes...

Burning up a human body releases a cringe-worthy medley of pollutants, regardless of the fuel used to spark you up! You can compare it to one last, final super-fart. (Am I branching into poor-taste territory yet?)

So cremation isn't such an Earth-lovin' way to put someone to rest after all. But I mean c'mon.. can't you just put me in the ground, let the worms have at 'er, and call it a (loooong) night? Sadly.. nope. Traditional burial sounds like an environmentally sound idea, but the space that modern cemeteries take up is enormous. GINORMOUS. We all know this. Pristine woodlands are clear-cut all over the place for space to put someone in the ground and then cover the entire area in big bulky concrete slabs and stones, making sure that no critters, no plant life, .. actually nothing living at all can ever flourish there again. Well.. save for the worms. They'll eat well. But still! What a waste of material, space, and wild areas!
So what's the solution? You've gotta look this up on the 'net.. it's neat. A whole big idea aptly named "natural burials" is blossoming in North America and other parts of the world. Here's how it goes:

- Whole people are buried without all the nasty chemicals included in the embalming process (that stuff gets into the ground water.. yecch.), without a big wooden coffin, (waste, again.. I mean seriously!) or cement stuff.
- Biodegradable coffins are becoming more and more of a thing - mostly made from recycled cardboard and paper fibres. NOW we're talkin'!
- This sort of contraption gets buried in a much more natural space - in sparse woodlands, or natural fields - where the local flora and fauna are as disturbed as little as possible, and the woodland critters are free to frolic amongst the almost impercievable burial sites, marked with particular trees, rocks, small and simple markers, or absolutely nothing at all. Do you really have to know the exact place?

The more I read about it, the more I think this is such a huge, awesome idea that I say "well duh" about, and really think that we all should've figured out a long time ago. Well, we did actually.. not so long ago, burials of the average joe all over the world were in in this fashion, before the whole idea of the modern cemetery sprung up. There's a ton of information on this phenom out there, and it's not hard to track down. Here are a few I checked out!

www.naturalburialassoc.ca - Fantastic! This is the best one, a must-see. Go Canada!

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eco-cemetery - Yep, Wikipedia covers it. And how! Check out those stats!

http://www.naturalburial.coop/canada/ - again, cool.

And there you have it - as far as I'm concerned, it's a must-do. Remind me to contact my next of kin! And if a random piece of space junk lands on me while I bike to work this week, well... gentle readers, you'll know exactly what to do!

Til next time.... hope you're all enjoying all them summer daisies....