"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

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