Does social responsibility extend after death? Genesis 3:19 invokes the ultimate human condition; "For dust you are, and to dust you shall return." Humans exist with and because of the Earth. Just as our life should recognize and respect our dependence upon the Earth, so too should our death. Many traditional American burials cause economic hardships and environmental harms. In an increasingly diverse society with an increasingly finite land resource, the following problems – land acquisition, resource consumption, and fossil fuel emissions contributing to climate change – beleaguer traditional burials.

The unnecessary use of lands, resources, and chemicals typify most American burials. Extensive land acquisition remains the foremost problem with traditional burials. Cemeteries occupy more than two million acres of American soil. Arlington National Cemetery, more than 600 acres, exemplifies the problem. Defense Department officials expected the cemetery to reach maximum capacity by 2025. In response, they recently found an additional 70 acres to expand this cemetery that averages 26 burials a day. Our demand for burial lands will increase as our population increases unless Americans embrace alternatives.

The consumption of resources intensifies the problem. The extraction, processing, and transportation of these resources of course require fossil fuels which lead to greenhouse gas emissions and hence climate change. The caskets and vaults in a ten-acre cemetery comprise a thousand tons of steel and twenty thousand tons of concrete, respectively. American cemeteries use enough metal to make the Golden Gate Bridge and enough concrete to build a two-lane road from New York to Detroit each year. All this to prolong the inevitable.

A million gallons of formaldehyde, the carcinogenic active ingredient in embalming fluid, are buried with the dead each year. Leaching of formaldehyde into the surrounding soil and groundwater seems likely, the effects of which are unknown. The application of fertilizers and pesticides keeps the grass green and the weeds dead, the effects of which are known. Pesticide runoff kills fish, deforms amphibians, and contaminates drinking water. The fertilizer necessitates increased mowing which increases fossil fuel emissions. To add insult to injury, the incessant mowing favors invasive species over native species.

The “green burials” eulogized by Mark Harris, author of Grave Matters, promise to remedy these problems. Green cemeteries incorporate shrouded bodies in amongst the trees. The buried bodies endure no embalming. No steel coffins, concrete vaults, or elaborate headstones complete the process. The U.K. has 200 such burial places whereas the U.S. has a mere handful. The Ramsey Creek Preserve opened in South Carolina in 1996. The U.S. offers only four other green cemeteries, all of which opened this century. We need more. What better memorial than a walk in the woods?

Green burials on rural land offer another alternative to private landowners. Conservation easements ensure the protection of the burial land from development. Should the environmental benefits fail to compel, surely the economic benefits will entice. Traditional burials cost upwards of ten thousand dollars. Green burials reduce this cost to a few thousand.

Green burials include cremation. If cremation remains controversial, then it is now more for environmental concerns than religious ones. Crematoria release several pollutants including mercury from tooth fillings. However, the Environmental Protection Act of 1990 mandates all cremators to comply with specified emission requirements by 1998.

Cremation coexists with a question – what to do with the ashes? Though originally confined to the realm of the mantle, possibilities now abound. When mixed with cement, the resulting "reef balls" can be deposited in the sea to form marine habitat. LifeGem promises to make the carbon from your loved one into a diamond. From creative to morbid in an instant. Before we let loose our imaginations, I caution romantics to remember that a green burial forbids long distance transportation or intensive processing because of the climactic consequences.

I personally like the idea of a totem made from local materials with elaborate designs like those of the Pacific Northwest natives. These totems can hold ashes. Totems commemorate a life yet take up minimal space. They mark a sacred space and provide a substitute for the cemetery. Perhaps totems best memorialize the dead while respecting the living and the land.

I cannot conclude without acknowledging the benefits of traditional cemeteries. They offer refuge from the hubbub of the city. They bestow repose to visitors and serenity to mourners. They grant knowledge to genealogists. They remind us of ubiquitous population pressures. And though the grass may be fertilized and mowed, it provides more habitat than the surrounding concrete city.

Nature is a continuum. Though a traditional cemetery is not nature incarnate, it is at least on the map. Just as Manhattan’s Central Park boasts 275 visiting bird species, cemeteries everywhere provide habitat and protect the land from development. And so I see another continuum, one imposed by death but modified by humans, with the absurdity of resource intense burials on one end and the sagacity of green burials on the other. Social responsibility unto the end.