By Andrew B. Hoffman
In today’s modem world oftexting, online shopping and dinner being delivered to your door by DoorDash it seems there is no limit to how the very basics of life have changed in the past years. Instant gratification and convenience dominate our society as every industry struggles to make the product and/or service faster, better and cheaper. The Funeral industry is no different, coming up with better ways to properly memorialize your loved one with online funeral services and different cremation options to make things cleaner and fitting. But there is a segment of the population that looks for, if not yearns for a simpler way of honoring their loved one. This method is actually a return to a more traditional way of final disposition that are ancestors followed. Today this method has been dubbed Green Burial!
What is green burial? Many have never heard of it before. Put simply green burial is a natural way of laying a deceased loved one to rest without a lot of modem traditional methods that are not environmentally friendly. To better understand what green burial is it is important to understand what the traditional methods of disposition are.
First, there is traditional burial which many people are familiar with. This method consists of usually embalming the deceased with a chemical solution of formaldehyde or glutaraldehyde. Then the deceased is dressed, has cosmetics put on and placed in a metal or wooden casket for a public viewing and service. Following the service the loved one is taken to a cemetery for burial and this usually consists of placing the casket in a concrete or metal vault in the ground. Once the casket is in the vault, the vault lid is placed on and then both the vault and casket are covered over with earth. The grave is then traditionally marked with a monument of some kind denoting the location of the deceased. Now what was just described is the standard type of traditional burial service but there are many variations of this such as graveside services to crypt entombment but that is another article for another time.
Andrew B. Hoffinan is a funeral director at Jeffries and Keates and Keates-Plum Funeral Homes and a twenty-two year veteran of the funeral industry.
