Green Burial and Natural Death: Returning the Body to the Earth

What Is Green Burial?

Green burial is the practice of returning the human body to the earth in the simplest, most ecologically responsible way possible. No chemical embalming. No sealed metal casket. No reinforced concrete vault. Instead, the body is washed, wrapped in a biodegradable shroud or placed in a simple container made of wicker, untreated wood, or recycled cardboard, and buried at a depth that allows aerobic decomposition.

The principle is straightforward: the body is organic matter, and organic matter belongs in the soil cycle. A green burial allows microorganisms, insects, and fungi to do what they have done for billions of years. The body's carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and trace minerals feed the living earth rather than being locked away in a sealed box underground or released as atmospheric pollution through cremation.

This is not a fringe movement or a new invention. It is the oldest form of human disposition, practised by virtually every culture on earth until the modern funeral industry created an alternative that most people now mistake for tradition. As researcher Mark Harris writes in Grave Matters, "the conventional American funeral is a 20th-century invention, not a centuries-old custom" (Harris, 2007).

The green burial movement asks a direct question: why do we pump the dead full of formaldehyde, seal them in steel, and encase that steel in concrete? The answer, as Jessica Mitford documented in her landmark 1963 expose The American Way of Death, has far more to do with industry profit than with any genuine care for the dead or the living.

The History of Natural Burial

For the vast majority of human history, there was no alternative to natural burial. Bodies were wrapped in cloth, placed in the ground, and left to decompose. The Neanderthals buried their dead at least 100,000 years ago, and every major civilization since has practised some form of earth burial or open-air exposure without chemical preservation.

Ancient Egyptian mummification is often cited as an early form of embalming, but it was reserved for royalty and the priesthood, not the general population. The vast majority of Egyptians were buried simply in the desert sand. In Jewish tradition, the body is washed in a ritual called tahara, wrapped in a plain white linen shroud (tachrichim), and placed in a simple wooden coffin or directly in the earth. This practice, which dates back thousands of years, is essentially a green burial.

Islamic burial follows a similar pattern: the body is washed three times, wrapped in white cotton (kafan), and buried directly in the earth without a coffin, facing Mecca. Hindu and Buddhist traditions favour cremation on open-air pyres, returning the body to the elements through fire rather than soil. Indigenous peoples across North America, Australia, and Africa practised ground burial, scaffold burial, tree burial, and sky burial depending on the local ecology and spiritual framework.

The common thread across all these traditions is that the body was understood as belonging to the natural world. Death was not a problem to be engineered away. It was a transition, a returning, a completion of the cycle that Hermes Trismegistus described in the Hermetic texts as the dissolution of form back into the universal substance.

The Industrialization of Death

Modern embalming in North America began during the American Civil War, when families wanted to transport the bodies of soldiers home for burial. Thomas Holmes, often called the "father of modern embalming," preserved over 4,000 soldiers during the war using arsenic-based solutions. When Abraham Lincoln's embalmed body was displayed during a 20-day, 1,700-mile funeral train journey in 1865, the public saw for the first time what chemical preservation could do.

From that point forward, the funeral industry grew rapidly. Undertakers became "funeral directors." Simple wooden coffins became elaborately lined "caskets." Embalming shifted from a wartime necessity to a standard practice, marketed to families as a sign of respect and proper care. By the mid-20th century, the American funeral had become a multi-billion-dollar industry built on a set of practices that would have been unrecognizable to any previous generation.

Jessica Mitford's 1963 book The American Way of Death pulled back the curtain on this industry. The entire first print run of twenty thousand copies sold out in a single day. Mitford documented how funeral directors used emotional pressure, misleading language, and hidden fees to sell families services they did not need and had not requested. She showed that embalming, far from being a legal requirement or a universal custom, was primarily a profit centre for the funeral home.

Mitford wrote that before the turn of the century, the American funeral was "simple to the point of starkness." The transformation into an elaborate, expensive ritual was driven not by public demand but by the ingenuity of undertakers who recognized the commercial potential of grief. Her reporting led to Congressional hearings and eventually to the FTC Funeral Rule of 1984, which requires funeral homes to provide itemized pricing.

Despite these reforms, the funeral industry in North America remains one of the least transparent consumer markets. The average conventional funeral now costs between $8,000 and $12,000 CAD, and families making decisions in the immediate aftermath of a death are rarely in a position to comparison-shop.

The Spiritual Dimension of Returning to Earth

Green burial carries a spiritual weight that extends far beyond environmental ethics. When a body is placed directly into the living soil, something happens that a sealed vault prevents: the matter that composed a human life becomes food for other life. Fungi colonize the tissue. Bacteria break down proteins into amino acids. Root systems absorb the released minerals. Within a year, the molecules that once formed a person are participating in the growth of grass, wildflowers, and trees.

This is not metaphor. It is biology. And for many people, this biological reality carries a profound spiritual meaning. The body does not simply decay. It transforms. It feeds. It continues.

The Hermetic tradition teaches that nothing in nature is ever destroyed; it only changes form. The Principle of Vibration holds that all matter is energy in motion, and the Principle of Rhythm teaches that all things move through cycles of creation and dissolution. A green burial aligns death with these principles in the most literal way possible: the body's energy and matter re-enter the living system from which they came.

Indigenous traditions around the world share this understanding. The Lakota phrase Mitakuye Oyasin ("all my relations") expresses the interconnection of all beings. When a body returns to the earth, it affirms that interconnection. The Australian Aboriginal concept of "returning to country" recognizes that the land and the person are not separate. Many First Nations peoples in Canada hold that the body must touch the earth directly for the spirit to complete its journey.

Even in secular terms, there is a growing recognition that how we treat the dead reflects how we understand our relationship with the living world. Sealing a body in steel and concrete is, at its root, an act of separation. Placing a body in the soil is an act of participation.

Conservation Burial Grounds

Conservation burial grounds represent the most ambitious expression of the green burial movement. These are cemeteries that function as nature preserves. Burial fees fund the permanent protection and ecological restoration of the land. Graves are marked with native plantings, fieldstones, or GPS coordinates rather than polished granite headstones. Over time, the burial ground becomes indistinguishable from the surrounding landscape.

The concept was pioneered by Dr. Billy Campbell, a physician in South Carolina who founded Ramsey Creek Preserve in 1998, the first conservation burial ground in the United States. Campbell's insight was that land conservation could be funded through burial fees, creating a model where death care directly supports ecological health.

The Green Burial Council certifies conservation cemeteries at the highest level, requiring an established conservation easement or deed restriction that ensures the land will never be developed. The cemetery must also fund ongoing land management and ecological monitoring. Over 370 cemeteries across North America now hold some level of GBC certification (Green Burial Council, 2024).

Conservation burial grounds challenge the fundamental economics of conventional cemeteries, which treat land as a commodity to be filled and eventually expanded. A conservation cemetery treats land as a permanent ecological asset. The burial is not consuming the land. It is funding its protection.

For those who want their death to carry a tangible ecological legacy, conservation burial is one of the most direct options available. The body nourishes the soil. The burial fee protects the land. And the resulting preserve provides habitat, carbon sequestration, and watershed protection for generations to come.

Home Funerals and Home Vigils

Before the professionalization of death care, families cared for their own dead. The body was washed at home, dressed in familiar clothing, laid out in the parlour (which is why we still call it a "parlour"), and watched over by family and friends during a vigil that lasted one to three days. Neighbours brought food. Children were present. Death was visible, tangible, and woven into the fabric of daily life.

The home funeral movement is reclaiming this practice. In every Canadian province, families have the legal right to care for their own dead at home. No law requires you to hire a funeral director, although most people do not know this. Embalming is not required by any Canadian province for standard burial or cremation. A family can wash and dress the body, hold a vigil using dry ice or refrigeration to preserve the remains, and transport the body to a cemetery or crematorium themselves.

The Canadian Integrative Network for Death Education and Alternatives (CINDEA) provides province-by-province guides to the legal requirements and practical logistics of home funerals. Organizations like the National Home Funeral Alliance in the United States offer training for families and communities who want to take back this most intimate form of care.

Home funerals are not for everyone. They require planning, practical knowledge, and a willingness to be physically present with death in a way that modern culture discourages. But for those who choose them, the experience is often described as one of the most meaningful things they have ever done. The act of washing and dressing someone you love, of sitting with their body through the night, of carrying them to their grave, is an act of love that no professional service can replicate.

Natural Organic Reduction (Human Composting)

Natural organic reduction (NOR) is the newest alternative in green death care, and it may be the most radical. The process places a human body in a large vessel with organic materials (wood chips, straw, and alfalfa) and allows microbial activity to transform the remains into approximately one cubic yard of nutrient-rich soil over roughly 30 days.

The process was pioneered by Katrina Spade, an architecture graduate student who founded Recompose in Seattle. Spade was inspired by the agricultural practice of livestock composting, in which deceased farm animals are placed in organic matter and allowed to decompose naturally. She worked with researchers at Washington State University to develop and test a human-scale version of the process.

Washington became the first state to legalize natural organic reduction in 2019, and Recompose opened its first commercial facility in 2021. As of 2025, NOR is legal in 14 US states, with more legislation pending. Recompose announced plans to open its first international facility in British Columbia by late 2025, followed by a micro-composting centre in London in early 2026.

The resulting soil can be used to grow trees, enrich gardens, or restore damaged land. Families receive the soil and can choose what to do with it. Some spread it on family land. Others donate it to conservation projects. The symbolism is powerful: the person becomes literal nourishment for new growth.

Aquamation and Alkaline Hydrolysis

Aquamation, formally known as alkaline hydrolysis, offers another ecologically responsible alternative to cremation and conventional burial. The process uses a solution of 95% warm water and 5% alkali (potassium hydroxide) to accelerate the natural decomposition process. The body is placed in a stainless steel chamber, and over 6 to 20 hours, the water-based solution breaks down soft tissue, leaving only bone fragments and a sterile liquid.

The bone fragments are processed into a fine powder and returned to the family, similar to cremation "ashes." The liquid effluent, which contains amino acids, peptides, sugars, and salts, is sterile and can be safely released into the municipal water system or used as fertilizer.

The environmental advantages of aquamation are significant. The process uses up to 90% less energy than flame cremation. It produces zero direct carbon emissions, no mercury vapour, and no airborne particulates. A 2011 lifecycle analysis found that alkaline hydrolysis is more environmentally friendly than even natural burial when both processes are evaluated at their optimal scenarios (Keijzer & Kok, 2011).

Aquamation is currently legal in Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan, and the Northwest Territories in Canada, as well as 21 US states. It gained widespread public attention in 2022 when Archbishop Desmond Tutu chose aquamation for his own disposition, calling it the most environmentally responsible option available.

The main barrier to wider adoption is infrastructure. The equipment is expensive, and relatively few funeral homes currently offer the service. But consumer demand is growing, and the number of aquamation providers has increased significantly in recent years. For those who prefer a process that leaves bone remains (like cremation) without the environmental cost of burning fossil fuels, aquamation is the strongest available option.

The Green Burial Council

The Green Burial Council (GBC) was founded in 2005 as the first North American organization dedicated to certifying environmentally sustainable death care. The GBC certifies cemeteries, funeral homes, and burial products at multiple levels, providing consumers with a reliable way to verify green claims in an industry that has historically resisted transparency.

For cemeteries, the GBC offers three certification levels:

Hybrid cemeteries allow both conventional and green burials in designated sections. They must offer burial without a vault, accept biodegradable containers, and prohibit the use of toxic chemicals in their green burial sections.

Natural burial grounds require all burials to meet green standards. No embalming, no vaults, biodegradable containers only. The grounds must also have environmental management plans and restrict the use of non-native landscaping.

Conservation burial grounds meet the highest standard. In addition to all natural burial ground requirements, they must be protected by a conservation easement, fund ongoing land management, and partner with a land trust for permanent ecological stewardship.

As of 2024, the GBC has certified over 370 cemeteries across North America. The Green Burial Society of Canada works in partnership with the GBC to promote certification and maintain a directory of green burial options across the country.

Green Burial in Canada

Green burial availability in Canada has grown steadily over the past decade. British Columbia leads with at least 17 cemeteries offering green burial options, including dedicated natural burial sections in municipal cemeteries. Ontario, Alberta, and Quebec all have multiple certified or green-friendly cemeteries, and availability continues to expand as demand increases.

Canadian law is generally supportive of green burial. No province requires embalming for standard burial or cremation. No province requires a concrete vault. Families have the right to care for their own dead at home in every province, although the specifics of transportation and documentation requirements vary by jurisdiction.

The Green Burial Society of Canada (greenburialcanada.ca) maintains the most comprehensive directory of green burial options in the country. They also provide education, advocacy, and resources for families who want to plan a green funeral. Their work has been instrumental in shifting public awareness and expanding the availability of natural burial across Canada.

Cost Comparison

The financial argument for green burial is straightforward. A conventional funeral in Canada, including embalming, a casket, a viewing, a funeral service, a burial vault, and a cemetery plot, typically costs between $8,000 and $12,000 CAD. A green burial, including a biodegradable container or shroud, a natural burial plot, and basic services, typically costs between $1,500 and $4,500 CAD.

The savings come from three main eliminations: no embalming (saving $500 to $1,200), no metal or hardwood casket (saving $2,000 to $5,000), and no concrete vault (saving $1,000 to $3,000). A biodegradable casket or shroud costs a fraction of its conventional counterpart, ranging from $100 for a simple cotton shroud to $1,500 for a handcrafted wicker or sustainably harvested wood casket.

Human composting through Recompose currently costs approximately $7,000 USD, which is comparable to a mid-range conventional funeral but significantly more than a simple green burial. Aquamation typically costs between $2,000 and $4,000 CAD, comparable to cremation but with a much smaller environmental footprint.

It is worth noting that cost savings were among the most frequently cited reasons for interest in green burial in consumer surveys. For many families, the combination of lower cost, reduced environmental impact, and greater alignment with personal or spiritual values makes green burial the most appealing option on every dimension.

Environmental Impact

The environmental footprint of conventional death care in North America is staggering. Each year, the US alone buries an estimated 4.3 million gallons of embalming fluid (which contains formaldehyde, a known carcinogen), 20 million board feet of hardwood, 1.6 million tonnes of reinforced concrete, and 17,000 tonnes of copper and bronze in casket hardware. Cremation, while using less land, requires the fossil fuel equivalent of two tanks of car petrol per body and releases mercury, dioxins, and particulate matter into the atmosphere.

Research published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology found that burials and cremations had nearly four times the climate change impact of green burials, and 12 and 6.5 times the impact on water depletion, respectively (Keijzer & Kok, 2011). A 2022 study in Sustainability documented additional concerns about the leaching of formaldehyde and heavy metals from conventional cemeteries into groundwater (Barbosa & Martinez, 2022).

Green burial, by contrast, is carbon-negative when practised in a conservation burial ground. The body's carbon is sequestered in the soil rather than released into the atmosphere. The native vegetation planted over and around the grave absorbs additional carbon. The conservation easement prevents the land from being developed. Over decades, a well-managed conservation cemetery becomes a net carbon sink.

The green funerals market is growing at a compound annual growth rate of 8.7%, driven by increasing environmental awareness, lower costs, and a generational shift in attitudes toward death and the body (Emergen Research, 2024). The movement is no longer marginal. It is becoming the mainstream alternative.

How to Plan a Green Burial

Planning a green burial is simpler than most people expect. The first step is to locate a green burial cemetery in your area. The Green Burial Society of Canada (greenburialcanada.ca) and the Green Burial Council (greenburialcouncil.org) both maintain searchable directories. Many conventional cemeteries now offer green burial sections even if they are not fully certified.

Next, decide on a container. Options range from a simple cotton or linen shroud ($100 to $300) to a wicker basket ($500 to $1,200) to an untreated wood casket ($800 to $1,500). Some families build their own caskets from sustainably sourced lumber. The only requirement is that the container be fully biodegradable with no metal hardware, synthetic linings, or chemical treatments.

Communicate your wishes in writing. A will is one option, but a separate advance directive for disposition is more reliable because wills are often not read until after the funeral. Talk to your family. The single most common barrier to green burial is not legal or logistical. It is that family members did not know the deceased wanted it.

Reclaiming Death as a Natural Process

The green burial movement is part of a larger cultural shift toward reclaiming death from the institutions that have managed it on our behalf for the past century. This shift includes the Death Cafe movement, the rise of death doulas, the expansion of home hospice, and the growing popularity of advance care planning conversations.

At its core, the movement is about confronting what the Hermetic tradition calls the great illusion of separation. We are not separate from the earth. We are composed of it. And when we die, the most honest, most ecologically sound, and most spiritually coherent thing we can do is return to it.

The psychopomp traditions across cultures understood this. The guide of souls does not preserve the body. The guide releases it, allowing the physical form to dissolve back into the elements while the non-physical essence continues its journey. Green burial is the physical expression of this ancient understanding.

As the poet Wendell Berry wrote, "The earth is what we all have in common." In death, as in life, we belong to it. The question is not whether we will return to the soil. The question is whether we will do so gracefully, with intention, and in a way that feeds the living world rather than poisoning it.