Hal Stevens owns the CemeterySpot family of websites that provide products and services related to end of life topics. www.CemeterySpot.com is the Free Online Memorial Listing Service; www.CemeterySpot.org is the Free Cemetery Property Listing Service; and, www.CemeterySpot.com/blog, is the CemeterySpot blog.

He posted a blog article titled "Cremation or Burial – Carbon Emissions and the Environment", which seems to be in response to the take up of cremation in the USA.

He mentions

, Casket manufacturers are listed on the EPA’s top 50 hazardous waste generators list due to chemicals such as methyl and xylene used in the protective finish sprayed on the caskets exterior. On a segment of a Fresh Air interview on NPR, Mark Harris, author of “Grave Matters: Journey Through the Modern Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial” told host Terry Gross that the amount of wood from coffins located in a ten-acre cemetery is enough to build 40 houses and that there is enough concrete to build swimming pools for all of them.

After another incident last week where one of our staff mistook magnesium alloy handles for plastic, with the obvious consequences when these went into the cremator, I continue to scratch my head why we're not doing more to define some meaningful & environmentally friendly standards for coffins.