GREEN BURIAL

What happens to your mortal remains is up to you and the executors of your will. Choose executors prepared to obey the funeral instructions in your will. Nicholas Albery, editor of The Natural Death Handbook and a director of the UK educational charity the Natural Death Centre, prefers to leave his body to nature. In his will, he has specified that he wants to be buried on a piece of farmland that he and his wife were given as a wedding present, with no coffin, just wrapped in a sheet, and with an apple tree planted on top of him.

Two thirds of the people in the UK - such is their superstition about contemplating their own mortality - do not write a will.
Leaving your body to science is an uncertain business - only non-cancerous, unautopsied, relatively whole bodies, within easy range of a medical school, are accepted.
Anyone with green pretensions should think twice about cremation - 437,000 wooden coffins are wastefully burnt in the UK each year, polluting the atmosphere with dioxin, hydrochloric acid, hydrofluoric acid, sulphur dioxide and carbon dioxide.
At least burial, even with a wooden coffin, locks the carbon underground and does not add to the greenhouse effect. And it helps protect land from being used by humans, thus saving it for wildlife.
The Natural Death Handbook explains how families can go about organising cheap, green and 'd-i-y' funerals without undertakers.
Burials at sea: about 20 UK burials a year take place at sea. The licence is free, though the Ministry of Agriculture has produced a minefield of bureaucratic guidelines to discourage it.
There are 50 or so nature reserve burial grounds in the UK already open, with 40 more applying for planning permission. A tree is planted for each grave, which has no headstone, and, for those not using undertakers, cardboard coffins are obtainable, starting at £ 55, wooden coffins from £ 95 or lovely woollen shrouds at £ 120.
The Natural Death Centre has researched the laws and regulations for the UK surrounding burial on farmland and in large private gardens - a recent case in England and a planning appeal in Scotland have confirmed that no planning permission is required for "a limited number of unmarked and unfenced graves". Nevertheless people contemplating private burial would be wise to consult the Environment Agency (which encapsulates the former National Rivers Authority) and their local council environmental health department about possible pollution of water courses - and to go armed with chapter and verse on the regulations (available in Green Burial - contact the NDC on how to get hold of this), as local authorities find it hard to believe that the right to private burial has persisted from the days when Quakers often used to bury their relatives in the garden.
Beware - garden burial can cause dissension if not all members of the family are in favour, and can reduce the value of the property.
The Natural Death Handbook (£ 12-95 incl. p&p) and Before and After (£ 5-95 incl. p&p) are available from The Natural Death Centre, 20 Heber Road, London NW2 6AA, UK (tel 0181 208 2853). The Natural Death Handbook also covers Living Wills, Near-Death Experiences, financial preparations for dying, caring for the dying, laying out the body, making a coffin, a good funeral guide to helpful professionals, bereavement, books and UK organisations.

The Natural Death Centre
20 Heber Road, London NW2 6AA, UK.

The Natural Death Centre is a project of the the Institute for Social Inventions which runs the Global Ideas Bank.
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