S5 Box

Login




Forgot login?
Cremation Or Burial – Carbon Emissions And The Environment PDF Print E-mail
News - Green Funerals
Written by Pierre duParte   
Tuesday, 12 May 2009 07:39
"Each year, 22,500 cemeteries across the United States bury approximately 827,060 gallons of embalming fluid which includes formaldehyde and other hazardous chemicals. Buried caskets contain 90,272 tons of steel, 2,700 tons of copper and bronze and 30-plus million board feet of hardwoods. Cremation and burial vaults contain 1,636,000 tons of reinforced concrete and 14,000 tons of steel. These statistics were complied from some very reliable sources which include: Casket and Funeral Association of America, Cremation Association of North America, Doric Inc., The Rainforest Action Network, and Mary Woodsen, Pre-Posthumous Society."

Green burials” in a “green cemetery” seem to be a viable alternative to both traditional burials and to cremations. Centennial Park Cemetery in the South Australian state capital of Adelaide said it had studied the carbon impact of burials and cremations. The Centennial Park Cemetery carries out more than 900 burials and around 3,300 cremations a year. Cemetery chief executive Bryan Elliott said that every cremation created around 160 kg (353 pounds) of carbon dioxide, compared to 39 kg of carbon dioxide for each burial. But when the cost of maintaining grave sites, mostly covered by lawns at Centennial Park, is taken into account, cremations came out 10 percent greener than burials. “This is because we must look after the gravesite for a number of years by watering and mowing the surrounding lawn area and maintaining the concrete beam on which the headstone is placed,” Elliott said. “Burial is a more labor and resource intensive process, consumes more fuels and produces larger quantities of waste than cremation” added Elliott.

Source: articlespan.com



< Prev   Next >
 

The Internet contains literally thousands of news resources, harvesters and blogs relating to cemeteries, crematoria and funeral industries. The following are a just a few of them:


 Google News Google Blogs
Google News (Australian Focus) Funeral Wire dot Com Google Green Funerals
Members wanting to display a (advertising) banner on this web site are invited to do so. For more information please read this article.

The Index is intended to inform the public about members' cemeteries and operational standards. For example, funeral directors will see the index as useful resource, especially when they need to make bookings and work in "out of town" cemeteries. Members can get more information here. Non-members are also invited to participate by using this online form.

Click here to search the Index...

Information
Copyright © 2010. Cemeteries and Crematoria Association of NSW. Designed by Shape5.com