Examples of biodegradable burial options.
Red Hills Community Cemetery offers natural burial and uses a portion of the fee to permanently protect and maintain the natural environment.
The newly named Hickory Preserve is a special 96-acre tract of land in northeast Leon County within the fertile soils, rolling hills, oak canopied roads, and winding river systems of our Red Hills Region.
Our vision is to buy this land to protect and preserve these acres of woodland, maple swamp, hickory hammock, live oaks, and wildlife habitat in a conservation easement.
Interesting Fact:
Bodies were not embalmed until the Civil War and then only to preserve the bodies as they were transported home. We have no need for embalming to bury someone and it’s bad for the environment and for people working with that toxic embalming fluid. According to the American Cancer Society, embalmers who use formaldehyde have an increased risk of myeloid leukemia.
On this land we will create a sacred space for natural burial through the creation of a conservation cemetery on several acres of the Hickory Preserve, forever protecting the biodiversity found here while honoring those we love in community with nature.
A natural burial ground or “green” conservation cemetery is a type of cemetery that allows full body interment in the ground in a shroud or biodegradable container and using minimal heavy equipment for burial and landscaping, and without using formaldehyde-based embalming or concrete burial vaults.
Interesting Fact:
You could drive about 4,800 miles on the equivalent of the energy used to cremate one body. Additionally, you could travel to the moon and back 85 times on the energy equivalent used to cremate bodies in the U.S. in one year.
It is a cemetery where family and friends take an active part in the burial and the gravesite is part of protected land that is maintained with minimum intervention.
This is in contrast to the two disposition choices most used today in the US: conventional burial and cremation. Each year, conventional burials bury 20 million board feet of hardwood, 64,500 tons of steel, 1.6 million tons of concrete, 2,700 tons of copper/bronze and use 827,000 gallons of toxic formaldehyde embalming fluid.
Interesting Fact:
While cremation may seem to be a more benign environmental choice, the average cremation uses 28 gallons of fuel to burn a single body. This emits about 540 pounds of carbon into the atmosphere in addition to mercury, nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide. On the other hand, in a “green” burial, one’s body and accessories return to the earth so there is little or no environmental footprint.
Currently, there are two conservation cemeteries in Florida—Prairie Creek Conservation Cemetery in Gainesville and Heartwood Preserve in New Port Richey. These exist! Now we want that here.
For those of us looking for simpler, more authentic end-of-life practices, in which we can both honor our loved ones and the earth to which our bodies return, we ask you to join us in the creation of the Hickory Preserve & Conservation Cemetery in our beloved Red Hills Region.
For more information:
Conservation Burial Alliance:
http://www.conservationburialalliance.org/