Over the course of our lives, we are often posed with the question: do you want to be cremated or buried? What many don’t now is that both options harm our environment.

Your impact on the environment doesn’t stop once you die. If anything, it increases with services including cremation and burial. This is leading more people to make a decision about what happens to their body once they are gone, and how they can reduce environmental impact to make death more sustainable.

For 75 percent of Australians, cremation is the preferred method. The deceased is placed inside a cremation chamber that reaches 1,000 degrees Celsius for upwards of 90 minutes. The bones are crushed to a fine powder and returned to the family in an urn. However, one cremation emits 242kg of carbon dioxide into the air.

John Humphries, founder of Aquamation, a company that provides an alternative to flame cremation, tells upstart that traditional cremations have a range of environmental impacts.

“Each one of those are putting out tonnes of … greenhouse gas, toxic fuels, carcinogenic fumes, vaporised mercury and a whole lot of other chemicals as well,” he says.

“You’re warming the air; you’re causing global warming.”

Traditional burials can have an even larger impact, however, due due to the harsh materials caskets are made from, such as metal and concrete. When preparing a body for burial, embalming fluids are used for preservation. They contain ethanol and methanol, chemicals that damage the environment by working their way into the soil and underground waterways.

What many people don’t know, is that these aren’t the only two options. Sustainable methods of afterlife care are slowly increasing in popularity. Alkaline Hydrolysis, natural burials and eco-friendly urns are just some of the ways to sustainably die.

Aquamation is a sustainable cremation method called Alkaline hydrolysis, also known as water cremation. The body is placed into a stainless-steel drum of 95 percent water and five percent alkaline chemicals. Either potassium hydroxide or sodium hydroxide is used, or it can be a combination of both. The drum is then heated to 93 degrees Celsius for four hours, liquefying the body and only leaving the bones. Much like a regular cremation, the bones are crushed and returned to the family. This process produces zero emissions.

Humphries says whatever liquids remain from the process of a water cremation can actually benefit the environment.

“[It] can just go down the sewer and ends up in the ocean or in some cases where applying can be used as fertiliser,” he says.

“The bottom line is … you’re using a water process that has zero pollution. So, can’t get much better, can it?”

If the idea of cremation is all a bit too much, burial is the next option. However, land space in Australian cemeteries is an issue. The 2020 report to solve Sydney’s cemetery crisis found that by 2032, all the city’s existing cemeteries would be full, leaving nowhere to bury the dead.

One way to combat this spacing issue within cemeteries is through other eco-friendly alternatives to traditional burials. These can include the scattering and commemorative planting of sustainably cremated ashes and natural burials. These help prevent land space from being used up, damage occurring within the soil from harmful chemicals and the need for cemetery maintenance. Secretary of Upper Yarra Public Cemetery Jule Ormsby tells upstart about the requirements of their natural burial service.

“It has to be a sustainable coffin, something that breaks down,” she says. “So not a traditional coffin with glues, hinges, screws, handles, satin lining, polyester lining, it has to be shroud, wicker basket, cardboard box, something that naturally breaks down.”

When preparing for a natural burial, harsh chemicals and preservatives are not used on the deceased person.

“There’s no embalming, the clothes that the people are to wear are to be natural fibres,” she says.

Within the past six years, Ormsby has sold 20 natural burial grave sites and a handful of natural ash scattering areas within the Upper Yarra Public Cemetery, saying people who chose these methods “are looking at the environment.”

“They’re looking at their carbon footprint. How they can give back to the earth? They want to just become back to ashes to ashes, dust to dust, back to the earth.”

Photo: Close-up Photography of Concrete Tombstones by Mike Bird available HERE and used under a Creative Commons license. This image has not been modified.