Question: Which is greenest – cremation or burial?
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his question is a complicated blend of environmental and social factors, and we can't simply compost ourselves in the back yard. There are legal requirements governing all sorts of facets such as the logistics of preparing, transporting and disposing of bodies, and the Coroner's Act regarding the investigation of death. There are also laws if you would like to bequeath your remains for organ donation or medical research.
![With the growth of cities, real estate is becoming scarce, and cemeteries overcrowded. Image: Karl Hilzinger Photo: Karl Hilzinger With the growth of cities, real estate is becoming scarce, and cemeteries overcrowded. Image: Karl Hilzinger Photo: Karl Hilzinger](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/silverstone-ct-migration/76f37b67-18ee-4fcc-a736-9c31be5f26c6/r0_0_2000_1510_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
With the growth of cities, real estate is becoming scarce, and cemeteries overcrowded. In some places they resort to double-decker plots as a sort of high-rise development (perhaps that should be "low-rise").
Aside from the space, a grave has to be sturdy so the ground doesn't slump, ruining the landscaping. Depending on the construction, a lot of material can be used building a grave, which is where decisions such as the type of timber used becomes important. In the US it's estimated that each year, they bury enough metal to build the Golden Gate Bridge. A friendlier material is recycled timber. You can even buy a papier mache Egyptian sarcophagus.
Once buried, decomposition begins, and this is affected by the amount of oxygen. Deep burial is oxygen-poor, and generates more of the powerful greenhouse gas, methane. Shallow burial will contribute less than 30 kilograms of CO2. If the embalming fluid formaldehyde is used, that's an issue because it's carcinogenic.
The other option is cremation, but your parting gift to the world is burning about 56 cubic metres of natural gas and 4 kilowatt-hours of electricity, for a total of about 110 kilograms of CO2. That's roughly equivalent to the emissions due to a single person over a month. Plus there's heavy metals such as mercury.
My preference is closer to what Jack McLaren describes in My Crowded Solitude. He observed aboriginal people on Cape York around 1911 and his book speaks of "their custom of keeping the bodies of their dead for months before burying them ... the body was bound tightly with jungle-canes so split ... and then wrapped in many thicknesses of paper-bark, and placed in a more or less secluded part of the camp."
That form of burial would have no discernible environmental impact, but perhaps a reusable shallow grave instead of a camp site.
Response by: Rod Taylor, Fuzzy Logic
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