GREEN FUNERALS

Paul (Mulcher) Blaker is visiting Buncrana again from Nottinghamshire, England. Here he writes of carbon emissions and Green funerals (which are becoming more common place over there).

Its good to be back for a holiday break, Ian has asked me to help him with the column as he is busy decorating with environmentally friendly paint! There is something about the sea air here that helps me relax and refocus on things that are important. I always feel healthy and refreshed in this green and pleasant land. The refreshment that comes wrapped in re-useable recyclable glass at Roddins bar is particularly welcome.

I arrived here on Monday morning after a long car and ferry journey. We all take the freedom to travel by land, sea or air for granted. It gives us all great pleasure to enjoy the benefits and experiences we have visiting new places and meeting new people.

There is an environmental price to pay for this liberty. The only forms of transport that are carbon neutral in the sense that they do involve the burning of fossil fuels are walking, cycling, skateboarding, skiing, horse riding, rowing and sailing. Cars, trains, motor boats and planes all emit carbon dioxide the greenhouse gas most commonly implicated in global warming into the atmosphere.

My total journey from Nottingham to Buncrana includes about four hundred miles of driving and a two and a half hour ferry crossing. I do not know how much fuel a ferry crossing from Stranraer to Belfast uses but my car trip takes a full tank of petrol. My problem in attempting to make a carbon neutral journey would be that walking and cycling would take too long, I always fall off skateboards!
Global warming over the last ten thousand years has melted all the snow, I’m frightened of horses (strange because I love their emissions to help my organic vegetables grow) and crossing the sea in a rowing boat went out of favour with the Vikings. I like sailing but couldn’t get the car on a tall ship.

It would be worse if I were to fly over. Aeroplanes use huge amounts of fuel and pollute at high altitudes where it has been calculated each molecule causes thirty times more damage than it does at ground or sea level. If my children want to see Mickey Mouse in Florida ‘s Disneyland, one trip would use up their entire carbon dioxide output allowance that during their lifetime would be needed to stabilise the earth’s climate.

I don’t know what the answers are but when we know these facts we can make decisions and acknowledge we have to take responsibility for the consequences. It makes me more conscious to offset some of my carbon miles by taking care with energy use around my home and my responsibility to recycle and reuse. There is also a benefit in planting more trees to lock up carbon as well as the creation of forestry for other uses. I wonder how many trees we would have to plant for every plane trip we make.

Thinking about journeys led me to think about the greenest way to make my final journey. I have endeavoured to travel lightly on the earth and have decided that my return to it should reflect these efforts. Are we always happy to handover the arrangements for our passage to our spiritual home to others or are there decisions we would like to make now for our selves that will save our grieving loved ones the trouble. Without being morbid because, “it’s as inevitable as income tax” (as Mark Twain famously said), I have done a bit of research.

It doesn’t matter if our bodies are cremated or buried. The carbon dioxide emissions are the same. Cremation requires energy from a fossil fuel source and the alkaline ash produced doesn’t benefit the soil. When buried the body feeds the ground but in the traditional six foot grave it takes along time for the nutrients to become available. If it is permitted a shallower burial is better.

There is pollution into the atmosphere or the ground from the glues and resins in the MDF or the chipboard used in coffin manufacture. I don’t like the idea of mature trees or tropical hardwoods being felled to make a box to rot with me. Lots of alternatives are becoming available made from natural sustainable materials like willow woven into baskets, old fruit boxes or recycled pine and cardboard. It is possible to decorate all these as you wish and the woven willow coffins are particularly beautiful. When these decompose they are beneficial rather than damaging to the environment. They are also cheaper than the traditional type of coffin.

I have bought a burial plot in a woodland site in Sherwood Forest, the home of the legendary Robin Hood. My coffin is compressed cardboard and painted in environmentally neutral paint with a picture of a leaping salmon and a running hare, my two favourite wild animals on the sides. I will be buried about three feet deep so I’m readily available to the mountain ash tree and the wild flowering spring bulbs planted on top of me. When I’m laid to rest my friends can have a sing-song in the pub afterwards.

Any way I hope I’ve got a long way to go till then. My work as the Mulcher is far from complete and
If any of this has given you food for thought there is a list of web sites to visit for more information.

www.eco-coffin.co.uk
www.naturaldeath.org.uk
www.peacefunerals.co.uk
www.welfare-state.org

Environmental.