When most people picture a cemetery, they see a quiet lawn of green grass and rows of monuments. What we rarely see is what lies beneath — the chemicals, concrete, steel, and wood buried along with the body.
Conventional burial, as it has developed in the United States, is not sustainable for people, for communities, or for the earth.
Every year, cemeteries in the U.S. bury:
- Over 800,000 gallons of formaldehyde (the equivalent of 1.2 Olympic swimming pools).
- 115 million tons of steel (enough to build more than 2,000 Empire State Buildings).
- 2.3 billion tons of concrete (enough to pave a sidewalk to the moon 28 times).
- Millions of acres of hardwood forest cut for caskets — enough to build nearly 5 million single-family homes.
And all of this takes up an estimated 1 million acres of land.
Cremation is often seen as a greener alternative, but it carries its own costs. In North America, flame-based cremation uses enough fossil fuels every year to drive halfway to the sun. Each cremation releases an average of 250 pounds of carbon dioxide, along with mercury, sulfur dioxide, and other toxins. Scattered or buried ashes can raise soil pH and damage root systems.
For generations, we’ve been taught to see embalming, vaults, and cremation as the “normal” way to care for our dead. But this normal has come at a cost: poisoned soil, polluted air, deforested land, and wasted resources.
The truth is simple: conventional deathcare does not serve the living or the land.
Green and conservation burial offer another way. By choosing simplicity — an unembalmed body, a biodegradable shroud or casket, burial at a depth that nourishes the soil — we return to practices that honor both the dead and the earth.
The numbers tell a sobering story, but they also open a door: toward healing, toward sustainability, toward love for the land that will hold us when we die.