Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Greening Funeral Service with the Three R's

Reducing, reusing, and recycling have been touted by civic, private, and environmental organizations world-wide for the better part of three decades as a simple reminder that, over time, it is the choices we make every day can make a big difference in the environment.  Could there be opportunities to reduce, reuse, or even recycle in funeral service?  My first thoughts on this topic were along the lines of, "not so much" when it comes to funeral service products.  While it is certainly a good idea to apply the three R's in the funeral home office, break room, catering services, and restrooms, these are not the items we're all thinking about right now, are they?  I made a few calls in the last several months and I am, quite honestly, surprised and thoroughly fascinated at what I learned from some of you.

I'd never considered, not for one moment, the idea of recycling or reusing a casket or burial vault.  That is, not until I had the opportunity last October to speak with Charles "Buddy" Stiffler, 3rd generation funeral director at Stiffler Funeral & Cremation Service in Madison, Wisconsin. Buddy tells me of three baby-boomer couples in the last two years who have made prearrangements to share both casket and burial vault.  The couples were all acquaintances and conceived the idea together and then each couple made their own arrangements to share their burial plot, casket, and vaults with their spouse.  Two people, one cemetery plot, one casket, one vault, and one monument.  That is reducing, reusing, and recycling in funeral service!

I asked the obvious questions, of course.  Certainly the couples cannot coordinate the timing of their deaths.  "We exhume graves a couple times a year, but for investigative or relocation purposes," Buddy shares with me.  "It's not a stretch of the imagination to return the casket to our facility where we will carefully place the husband and wife together in perpetuity."  The second funeral service, of course, is a closed casket.  In fact, the casket won't be present as the condition of it is not predictable despite the decision by each couple to use a 16 gauge stainless steel casket in a sealed concrete vault.

Warming up to the idea, I wrote a few letters looking for more examples of the three R's in funeral service.  Could this be a new idea?  Maybe a trend?  After all, the thought of husband and wife sharing a final resting place together sounds nice.  Co-mingling human remans is not a new idea.  For many centuries in Europe, underground crypts and catacombs have served as the shared final resting places for human remains, "Shall we say unto the bones of our fathers, Arise, and go into another land?"  (For a fascinating story, look up the CNN documentary on the 200 miles of catacombs under Paris that serve as the final resting place for more than 6 million people.)

Next I heard from Theodore "Tidy" M. Balmer, a licensed funeral director in North Carolina.  Tidy shares that he's conducted one such service for a family that chose to reuse both casket and burial vault for an elderly gentleman who passed just two weeks after his wife was buried.  "I'd never considered opening a casket before, but we made it work for the family," said Tidy.  "They were rather petite individuals so there was plenty of room in the standard-sized casket for the couple to lay comfortably."  

"Oversized caskets are generally available as a suitable burial container for our growing [sic] population," says Cass Ketmacher at  Walters Casket Company in Indiana "but I didn't imagine fulfilling a request for an oversized casket suitable for two people!"  That's exactly what happened one day last summer when a Chicago widow buried her husband in an oversized casket. She didn't need the larger casket for him--he was an average size.  She made advanced arrangements for her own internment to share both casket and burial vault with her husband.

I also heard from several of crematory operators that, while not common, a number of families reuse the same urn for cremated remains for two members of the same family to co-mingle in one urn.  Samuel "Smokey" Chambers, assistant crematory operator at a crematorium in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, tells me over a cup of coffee, "If this trend gains momentum, there'll be a whole new market for larger oversized urns."  He continues with a smile, "I can imagine trading in your old urn for a larger one when the time arises and selling perfectly usable pre-occupied urns for a few dollars less than the new ones."  After a few more sips of coffee, we chuckled at the possibilities including an urn detailing service that could guarantee the previous occupant had thoroughly vacated the urn.

Examples of the three R's in funeral service is a timely topic for the first of April.  I trust you are warming up to new ideas as our long-awaited Spring brings milder temperatures.  If you have any examples of reducing, reusing, or recycling in funeral service, please comment here.

Green Funerals for The Minimalists

Could minimalism be the next influence in greener funerals?

At first glance, you might think you've heard about minimalism before. The phrase "Less is More" was the motto of German-American architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886 to 1969).   Regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modern architecture, Meis along with post WWI contemporaries including Frank Lloyd Wright, helped define a trend in design and architecture wherein their subjects were reduced to their necessary elements.  Post WWII America experienced a wave of minimalism, especially in the music and art of the 1960s and 1970s, reinforcing the appeal of pared down design elements.  London and New York witnessed another revival of minimalist architecture in the late 1980s where architects and fashion designers collaborated on boutiques to achieve simplicity using white elements, cold lighting, and large spaces with minimum objects and furniture.

There's another revival of minimalism in this new millennium.  As described by Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus and their two million followers (theminimalists.com), Minimalism is a lifestyle that helps people question what things add value to their lives.  It is a matter of living a more meaningful life with less stuff.  While each one of us embraces minimalism differently, our paths lead to the same place:  a life with more time, more money, and more freedom to live a more meaningful life.

Before we apply minimalist thinking to greener funerals, let us explore more deeply some examples of minimalism and how it might affect our choices.  My journey into minimalism began last summer.  After reading a few articles on Joshua and Ryan's blog, I quickly realized that "the clutter" in my life was a liability.  Not only did these things fail to bring joy into my life, many of these things were actually the cause of anxiety in my life.  The clutter in my life included clothing that hadn't fit in years, unfinished projects, spare parts, leftover building materials, books, papers, furniture, and a plethora of other things I had acquired, inherited, or purchased.  As a family, we began paring down.  More than ten truck loads left our home destined for garage sales, friends & family, and Goodwill where these things went to good use.  Even my 1978 BMW motorcycle, in boxes of parts, near and dear to me more than fifteen years ago and yet untouched for as many years went to a new home freeing up both storage space and my conscience.  It felt great.

More than 10 truck loads of stuff left our home.

Minimalism isn't a matter of living more cheaply or making painful sacrifices.  If fact, let us illustrate with a pair of shoes.  A minimalist might choose to keep just one pair of shoes… instead of 14 pairs like so many of us probably have right now.  One very nice pair of lace-up wingtips made by Allen Edmonds might cost more than $300.  However, these fine shoes will work for almost any occasion casual or formal, will last several years (even if worn daily so long as they are cared for), and be truly comfortable to wear.  For the person who keeps 14 different pairs of shoes, wearing just one very nice carefully selected pair of shoes might bring more joy into his/her life.  We might actually spend less money on shoes overall if we choose a pair of shoes that we will enjoy more thoroughly and for longer.  If we're only buying one pair of shoes, we can afford to pay a premium price for a pair that meets all of our needs.

Minimalist thinking can be applied to all of the choices in our lives.  Are we making choices that add to the joy in our lives?  Or are we making choices that add to the clutter and anxiety in our lives?  To live a more meaningful life, it helps to clear the clutter from our life's path.  That path is different for each and every one of us.  While possessions are the easiest place to start clearing away the clutter, the same thinking can improve the quality of our lives when applied to our health, relationships, the company we keep, in our careers, and yes, even funerals. 

As funeral service professionals let's ask ourselves, are we minimalists?  Are we helping our families make meaningful choices in funeral service?  Do the choices we present our families and the guidance we give them truly bring more meaning into their lives?  Do we propose a feature, aspect, or element of funeral service because that's just what we do?  …or because this element will bring meaning to the family?  While every family embraces the end-of-life sacrament differently, as professionals in funeral service we can lead our families to the same place: a meaningful funeral service.

Could a minimalist funeral be a greener funeral?  That depends on the family, but I'll bet more often than not that a carefully planned and meaningful funeral is greener than the "standard package" funeral.  Like the wingtip shoes, I'll also bet that many families are willing to spend more on carefully selected elements that are truly meaningful.  Many funeral directors tell me about a trend wherein families are choosing to spend less money on a casket and monument, but significantly more money on food and refreshments for a celebration.  Perhaps these families are asking themselves if their choices are bringing more meaning into the funeral service.  If we help our families ask exactly that, we could not only bring more meaning into funeral service, but we might also notice that many of these "meaningful choices" are also greener.

Good choices can bring more meaning into the funeral service.

The Green Hearse: Novel Idea or More Greenwashing?

In this column we've discussed almost every aspect of greening the funeral service including the casket, burial shroud, burial vault, cemetery, and the funeral home itself, but the green hearse is a new topic.  What effect might a hybrid, all-electric, or even human-powered bicycle have in making our way of death safer and healthier for all living things that remain?  Let us again keep in mind our five talking points on greening funeral service including biodegradability, sustainability, local-sourcing, toxicity, and carbon lifecycle assessment as we think about the eco-friendly funeral coach.

Last September, Golders Green-based (England) Leverton and Sons funeral home basked in world-wide news coverage for their eco-friendly hearse.  The all-electric Nissan Leaf converted to a funeral car earned the Green Funeral Director of the Year award for the family-owned funeral home.  The coach, which can drive 120 miles on a single electrical charge at a cost of about $5, was declared "star of the show" at the Good Funeral Awards in Bournemouth, England.

Japanese manufacturer, Lequios, first announced plans to build a Prius Hearse early in 2009.  In November of 2012, Lequios made the news again with their Prius Hearse and concept pictures, but the product was still in development.  Connecting Directors blogged the story and it went viral, but as of January, 2014, there's still no sign of the Prius Hearse leading funeral processions on our roadways.

In September of 2011 the U.K. based firm, Brahms Electric Vehicles, announced plans to build a hybrid electric funeral coach.  The prototype hearse, built from a Mercedes-Benz station wagon, adorned none of the typical paneling and hardware features of a hearse.  The company was searching for a partner to aid in outfitting the wagon with features of a hearse.  Opinion pieces on the prototype were less than enthusiastic.  Today, the web site appears defunct with broken links and no images. [3-July-2014 Update: Brahms continues in their mission with a Nissan Leaf platform and offers an electric hearse.]

In Reno, Nevada there's an entirely different approach to the electric hearse taking shape.  A 1973 Cadillac Hearse has been converted by EV enthusiast, William Brinsmead.  After four years and $22,000, the completely rebuilt funeral coach has driven more than 2000 miles.  Top speed is 60mph and the charging range is 60 miles.

The bicycle hearse is another approach to eco-friendly transport of human remains.  Sunset Hills Cemetery and Funeral Home made the news last May with their custom built bicycle hearse.  The sidecar cargo transport has electric assist for the pair of pedaling pallbearers. The whole package including a wicker casket costs $3500.  Director, Wade Lind, shares that five families have opted for the pedal power and there is a waiting list for the service.  There are a few other examples of custom-built bicycle hearses in both the US and the UK that have made the news in the last few years.

The few examples of electric and hybrid electric funeral coaches in the news in the last five years appear to be more media hype than rubber-meets-the-road change in funeral service.  The few proprietors enjoying media coverage appear to have reaped more reward from the media coverage than from the benefits of green funeral coaches.  Human-powered hearses make for a great story, but any funeral service requiring more than a few miles of service would be impractical.  That is, unless the family lined up to take turns pedaling.

What about our talking points?  Biodegradability is not relevant for a re-usable good like a funeral coach.  Electric and hybrid vehicles fall prey to scrutiny in sustainability, toxicity, and carbon life cycle assessment when considering the cradle-to-grave impact of building, using, and disposing a hybrid electric automobile.  Compare a Cadillac Hearse with a Toyota Prius assuming 10,000 miles annually.  The carbon footprint of the Prius would be 10,000 lbs. less than the Cadillac.  That's the same carbon impact as 5 steel caskets or 20 cremations.  This assumes the Prius hearse would get the same mileage as the standard model (which would not be the case), so the carbon savings might be only half our estimate.

Were it practical for wider adoption, the bicycle hearse would take the prize for eco-smart funeral transportation.  It appears the green funeral coach is more greenwashing than real impact.  It would be far better in all of our five talking points on greening the funeral service to move more families to locally-made natural burial caskets in lieu of steel.   We could also have a far greater impact by talking to families about the carbon impact and toxicity of cremation so those who value the environment might opt for a green[er] burial instead.