Burial quilts or cremation?
Photo Credit: Lisa J. Whitmer
Cremation has some advantages. It doesn’t take up valuable land space. But it has it’s downsides too.
Greenhouse gases: Almost all of the human body (96%) leaves the crematorium as emissions. These gases include ammonia, mercury, and carbon. Cremating a body also releases six times the amount of carbon dioxide that’s already present in the typical human body, which adds to local air pollution.
Nutrient cycle: Nature creates life out of death. We only borrow the elements that make up our bodies. When we cremate our bodies, they either a) sit on a shelf in an urn, which deprives the soil of nutrients, or b) get scattered into the soil, but has such a high salt content that it can actually inhibit plant growth.
Energy usage: The average cremation oven needs to get up to 2000 degrees Fahrenheit. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to create that much heat. It takes 2-3 hours to cremate a body, and can release 573 pounds of carbon dioxide into the air.
Burial quilts, on the other hand, when made sustainably of all-natural materials like cotton, linen, silk and wool, emit no greenhouse gases, allow the body to return essential nutrients back into the life cycle, and require very little energy to create.
Burial quilts, when used in conjunction with other green burial practices, are a low-impact and often net-positive for the environment.