Funerals hurt the environment. You don’t see it all directly, but believe me, they account for A LOT of pollution. When people choose a burial style funeral, they often overlook many unforeseen factors that make burial funerals so devastating for our environment.
Many of these factors that negatively impact the environment take effect behind the scenes, therefore, they are not as evident to the average person who is attending a funeral.
It is difficult to see the immediate impact of burial funerals until you analyze the problem from a larger scale. According to the United States Census Bureau, over 2.4 million Americans die every year. The National Funeral Directors Association found that the rate of burial funerals is 53% and 47% choose cremation in the United States in 2016. This means that over 1.2 million people will need caskets every single year in the United States alone! Using nationwide numbers really puts into context the affect of burial funerals. Now let’s look at HOW they affect our planet.
Materials Used
According to the Berkeley Planning Journal, conventional burials in the U.S. use 30 million pounds of hardwood, 2,700 tons of copper and bronze, 104,272 tons of steel, and 1,636,000 tons of reinforced concrete for burial vaults and caskets. The sheer amount of materials used is staggering.
The amount of wood needed to create caskets is equivalent to 4 million square acres of forest, which contains enough trees to sequester 65 million tons of carbon dioxide a year. The amount of wood used in casket making can supply the wood needed to build over 90,000 homes.
Land Allocation
Looking at land allocation on a global scale strongly illustrates the problem of burial funerals. Every year 55.3 million people die worldwide according to World Health Organization. Now imagine if all 55.3 million people chose a burial memorial service.
If every person gets a standard 7 ft by 3 ft grave plot this means that 1,161,300,000 square feet, or 41.66 square miles of habitable/arable land is now solely devoted to graveyards. Every year! And this number is only growing as our world population continues to grow.
Since people have been choosing burial funerals for centuries you can calculate the land that has been already allocated to graveyards. Worldwide, rough estimates of land usage for graveyards would be around 4,300 square miles which is the same size as Connecticut!
Emissions
The whole burial process is a CO2 emissions nightmare. So much energy is required to manufacture a casket and to transport it. Some other emissions come from:
- cutting down trees
- manufacturing the casket
- digging the grave
- transporting the wood
- transporting the casket
- cement manufacturing
- Remember those 4,300 square miles devoted to graveyards worldwide. That is a lot of lawn care maintenance for the cemetery grounds!
These are just a fraction of the factors which negatively impact the environment. None of these factors are out in the open for the average funeral guest, so nobody really gets to see the full scope of the problem in action. It is also almost impossible to put a definitive number on emissions directly related to the funeral industry, but it is safe to say that the impact of the funeral industry is more than just negligible.
Toxic Chemicals
The main ingredients in embalming fluid are formaldehyde, glutaraldehyde, phenol, humectants, dyes, anti-edemic chemicals, and disinfectants. When these chemicals are buried in the ground they don’t just disappear. They gradually work there way into the soil and underground waterways which constitute America’s water table.
We leak 827,000 gallons of formaldehyde-based embalming fluid into our waterways and soil every single year, according to the National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA). Not only is embalming fluid toxic, but the chemicals used to process and finish the wood for the caskets are also detrimental to the environment.
People tend to act like once you bury something, it has no effect on the environment anymore which is simply untrue. For a better understanding of America’s groundwater and aquifer system, check out the illustrations at the USGS Water Science School.
It is obvious that the burial process creates many problems for our environment that are not immediately noticeable unless you take the time to analyze the whole process.
We all are aware of the many things humans do, which have long-lasting effects on the environment, which is why it is important to limit these activities if possible. It is time that the funeral industry rethinks its role in protecting our planet.
One of the best ways the average person can lessen their impact on the environment with regards to funerals is by choosing cremation. However, if you chose a burial style funeral, there are still things you can do to reduce the environmental impact.
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