Environmental impacts of conventional burial and cremation practices
[00:00:09] Fain: Hi, my name is Randi Fain and this is the Voices in Bioethics podcast. Today we’re going to be exploring the environmental impact of traditional death practices such as embalming, burial, and cremation. In a future podcast, we’ll discuss environmentally friendly alternatives to these practices. Today we’re privileged to have Lee Webster as our guest. Lee is an internationally recognized writer, educator, and public speaker on funeral reform. She has served in major leadership positions of the Green Burial Council, Conservation Burial Alliance, National Home Funeral Alliance, National End of Life Doula Alliance, and she’s the director of both the New Hampshire and Vermont Funeral Resources and Education. She’s the author of several books, including the After Death Care Educator Handbook, Changing Landscapes Exploring the Growth of Ethical, Compassionate, and Environmentally Sustainable Green Funeral Service, and the Green Burial Master Class Companion to the Redesigning the End Class, which is the only course that carries certification for green cemetery operators. Lee’s an instructor and guest lecturer in universities and mortuary schools and a frequent background contributor to major publications including the New York Times, NPR, and the Wall Street Journal. Welcome Lee.
[00:01:26] Webster: Thank you for inviting me.
[00:01:27] Fain: Pleasure to have you. Today, people seem to be increasingly mindful of pollution and climate change, and they are, many of them, actively working to reduce their contribution to these environmental harms. That said, addressing the environmental impact of traditional death practices like embalming, burial, and cremation is not necessarily top of mind for them. This could be because of our Western tendency towards denial of death, or in part due to how deeply entrenched these practices already are in our culture, and of course the deep pockets of the funeral industry that influence both legislation and practice. Despite all of that, eco-friendly alternatives to embalming, burial, and cremation are emerging. Ethically, this opens a dialogue about how to balance stewardship of the earth against the seemingly unassailable and time-honored cultural and religious practices around death. So before we explore the environmental harms of these practices, can you share how you came to be involved in this work?
[00:02:28] Webster: Sure. I think this has just always been a real interest for me, both the death side of things and the conservation side of things, and particularly natural burial, and then moving outward from there into what we have to do to care for bodies prior to the death in green and more natural ways. It all just made sense to me, putting all of those things together.
[00:02:51] Fain: Thank you. That’s fascinating. I’d like to ask you now to walk us through the current practices that are being used and to help us understand exactly how each of them contribute to harming the environment. So let’s start with embalming. What is embalming as currently practiced, and what is the purpose? Why are people doing it?
[00:03:13] Webster: Yeah, the embalming that we do right now is arterial embalming, and it requires that the fluids in the body be removed and replaced with chemicals that have preservatives in them, very short-term preservatives, and other things, things that are going to puff up our skin, make it look natural, as natural as it can when you’re dead, and that type of thing. It’s not a health and safety issue. If it were, we wouldn’t be removing bodies, fluids with potential pathogens and all that kind of stuff. It has nothing to do with health and safety. It has everything to do with preserving the body long enough to get through a public viewing at a commercial business, a funeral home, basically.
[00:03:55] Fain: So how did we get there? What, where did it start? What are the origins of modern-day embalming?
[00:04:00] Webster: Well, embalming has been something that humans have been experimenting with forever. But in the 1860s, during the Civil War here in the U.S., it became imperative that for a lot of families, particularly in the North, to get their soldiers back home for burial when they could, when they can afford it. In fact, sometimes they would pay for it ahead of time, send their soldier out with a note inside their uniform saying where, who to call and what to do. So the idea was to use their arterial embalming, which is different from just packing the body and opening it up and packing it full of nice smelling things. The idea then was to drain and replace. And unfortunately, they were using all kinds of experimental materials that included formaldehyde, but mostly it was mercury and zinc and, you know, all kinds of just awful, awful materials. But it did the job. And the railroads required that the body be embalmed in some fashion in order to be able to be moved on the trains. So it became an imperative if you wanted to bring someone home.
[00:05:03] Fain: So the railroads required embalming then. Are there legal requirements now regarding embalming? Do you have to do embalming?
[00:05:10] Webster: No. No, you don’t. But there are a lot of buts around that because there are several states that have put in place legislation that requires embalming under certain circumstances and within certain timeframes. But the easy answer is that no, you’re not required. Nobody can force you to do an invasive chemical procedure on a body within certain parameters, meaning if you retain custody and control of the body and make those decisions yourself. The minute you enter into an agreement where you give up your right to care for your loved one that is a constitutional right, by the way, if you hand it off to somebody else, then they are subject to rules and regulations that have been put in place by the state. So those regulations then may require it for those certain circumstances.
[00:05:58] Fain: So when you say hand it off, if I hand off my loved one from the hospital to the funeral home, can the funeral home say to me, you must be embalmed and we’re going to charge you for something that you may or may not want?
[00:06:10] Webster: They can if the state requires that an embalming occur within a certain period of time. For instance, there’s only a handful of states that have these requirements, but they often are 48 hours, 72 hours, one or two or 24 hours. A couple of them, a small handful of states in the US require that if someone has an infectious disease, they must be embalmed. So the science hasn’t, you know, hasn’t caught up to us yet here. But in terms of the, you know, under what circumstances are you going to be forced to embalm? You’re going to be forced to embalm if the law says that a body must be embalmed within X period of time once they’re in the care of a funeral home.
[00:06:51] Fain: So does that include viewing? If I want to have a viewing open casket of my loved one, would that be a requirement for embalming?
[00:06:59] Webster: That’s a different kind of requirement. That’s not a law. That’s going to be a practice. That’s what the business, the funeral business is requiring to have happen. Now, they don’t always. Again, if the law is clear, the family says we want to have a private viewing and we don’t want the body embalmed, most funeral directors are going to accommodate them.
[00:07:19] Fain: Are there alternative methods to that embalming that you just described that might serve some of the same purposes that would be more acceptable to people who are concerned about harms?
[00:07:30] Webster: Yeah, what’s worked since the beginning of time, we keep the body clean and we keep it cool. It does the job.
[00:07:37] Fain: So let’s get to the heart of the matter. What are the health risks associated with embalming the way that we’re doing it today?
[00:07:45] Webster: Yeah, this surprises people because the minute they hear us talking about chemicals and certainly the major ingredient in embalming fluid right now is formaldehyde, which is a known carcinogen. So you know who is that going to affect? Well, it’s not going to affect you or me if we go to a viewing and someone has been embalmed and they’re in front of us. Not a problem at all. The risk is to the embalmers. And what we have discovered is that there have been several studies done recently and embalmers have about a 13 times higher early death risk than the general public simply by being exposed to those chemicals, the fumes of formaldehyde while it’s in its liquid to gaseous state. And other pieces, an eight times higher risk of myeloid leukemia for embalmers because of this and a three times higher risk of ALS, Lou Gehrig’s disease. So these are significant risks that embalmers take in order to provide this service to families. And when families find out, they say, geez, I don’t really want you to do that. Some of them. But when you talk to funeral directors who embalm and embalmers themselves, they’ll say they’re doing this as a service and they’re more than willing to take the risk. So there’s a disconnect here between what people actually want to have happen and what they think has to happen.
[00:09:08] Fain: Is that increased risk? And you mentioned ALS and hematologic malignancies. That increased death risk is that death from all causes. So just being an embalmer increases your risk of death from any cause. Is that correct?
[00:09:22] Webster: Well, those two studies, the myeloid leukemia and the ALS studies were specific to discovering those. The 13 times higher risk is a general population. It’s just looking at the statistics of different professions.
[00:09:36] Fain: Got it. Are there other public health risks beyond to the people who are directly in contact with the chemicals once the body’s in the ground?
[00:09:45] Webster: Yeah, those are the ones that we know of. By the time the body has been fully embalmed, processed, and we’re going on to viewing, there’s no danger there. In terms of what happens when those bodies go into the ground, if they’re buried, it’s a very short term preservative. And the other thing is the other things that are in it, ok. We’re looking at humectants and surfactants, and we’re looking at benzene and other sort of byproduct chemicals that go in the ground. The formaldehyde in the end becomes the least of our worries when it comes to what happens to soil, microbial communities, and water and that type of thing. But with everything that we’re looking at environmentally around death, we’re looking at what happens in quantity. So that’s the distinction. One by one, it’s not that big a deal. Put it all together, and we have a significant concern.
[00:10:35] Fain: Thank you, that’s interesting. Let’s move to talk about conventional burials now. What exactly is involved in a conventional burial? Sort of all in, what are all the different components that are important to look at when you’re looking at environmental harms?
[00:10:50] Webster: Yeah, we put an awful lot of material into the ground in a conventional burial. And we do need to make the distinction between conventional and traditional. You’ll often hear funeral directors call this traditional, where we go to the local cemetery and we have a big concrete vault that’s waiting, and we’re going to put a metal casket or a casket that’s made of rainforest woods from South America. All of these types of things have huge energy consumption associated with them, big carbon outlays associated with them. All of these things then go into the ground, and they don’t biodegrade. That’s the real issue. That’s the difference. That’s a conventional burial. That’s what we’re doing now. We’ve been doing since about 1930. Prior to that, all the way back, it was what we’re calling traditional. (laugh) So funeral directors are going to call the new way traditional. That’s their tradition for the last few years, but we’re calling it something different.
[00:11:47] Fain: That’s interesting. So I’d like to sort of probe this a little bit more, because I actually did not understand the degree to, first of all, what a vault is and how prevalent it is. For example, even in Jewish cemeteries. So what exactly is a vault and how many cemeteries use vaults?
[00:12:06] Webster: Well, I can tell you that mostly it’s something that’s been building over years. It’s important to note that there were all types of vaults that were proposed prior to the 1930s, all kinds of reasons to try to keep grave robbers out. You know, that was the main thing, right? But by the time we get to the 1930s, nobody’s you know, we’ve got all kinds of acts in place, legislation that prohibits, and it’s been pretty successful, anatomical acts and so on. So we’re really not concerned about people digging up graves, grave robbing. But there was an interesting thing that happened in the 1930s, and that was the great zombie craze. So people started to be fearful of not only you know the grave robbers, which was still in living memory for a lot of people, but it was also being afraid now that Grandma was going to come out and get you in the night. So, these are the types of concerns that got us into this pickle. The way it happened was that a guy named Wilbert Haas went to Egypt to see King Tutankhamen’s tomb, and he he happened to be the nephew of a concrete and asphalt magnate back in the States. So, he had this great light bulb moment and he said, oh, this is it. This will solve the whole problem and I’ll come back. And he sold these things, and to this day, when you go to the cemetery, they’re going to tell you, okay, now you need to buy a vault. And here’s ours, the Wilbert Vault, named after him, the most popular vault there is. These weigh around two tons to start. That’s a lot of concrete. Basically, what it’s used for now, I mean, we know that we’re not worried about grave robbing, we’re not worried about zombies, most of us. But what we are concerned about is that we’ve now built the lawn cemetery. That’s been the standard for the last few decades. So, to keep the lawn flat for mowing, we need to have some kind of structure. And we’re putting these bodies very close together, so we need to be supporting them. That’s the whole purpose. Most people don’t even know that they’re required. Cemeteries are going to require them, municipal cemeteries particularly, because it’s cost-effective for them. And you’re right about Jewish cemeteries. Jewish cemeteries even have been you know, jumping on the bandwagon with this because it just, they sort of lost the whole aesthetic around this and the doctrine around this and started doing it. And we’re actually working pretty hard with the Jewish community to go back to traditional Jewish practices that leave the body unfettered.
[00:14:32] Fain: So, what you’re saying is the vault really isn’t consistent with Jewish practice.
[00:14:37] Webster: Correct.
[00:14:38] Fain: Okay. Is it fair to say that you talked about embalming now and then traditional and conventional burials? And it seems to me like the things that you’re describing, why we’re doing it, are mostly something that I would say is kind of cosmetic, right? For things to look nice, for either the body to look nice or for the lawn ceremony to look nice, that we’ve come to that place where the purpose is mostly aesthetics? Is that fair?
[00:15:06] Webster: I would say that’s true and I would add a little something to that and say that it may not have been intentional all along, but the result of these practices has been a continuous distancing of humans from the dead, from the living to the dead. And I think that that’s more the repercussion that we are seeing in this attempt to beautify and sanitize the whole process. I mean, not only are we, you know, distanced because of, you know, where they’re being buried and what that cemetery looks like, but we’re being distanced physically by a metal box inside a concrete box. And, you know, there’s just this sense that we can’t be near or close to our dead and that backs up to the entire funeral process. Our idea that we can’t take care of our own dead, that there’s something fearful about it. Well, there’s not. We’ve just gotten out of the habit of taking care of something ourselves and outsourcing it. So if you look at it all in a big picture, it’s just this movement toward distance, and we are trying to bring that back.
[00:16:07] Fain: So what you just described, a box in a box in a box, an embalmed person in a box in a box, it seems that there must be a significant delay in the timing of how a body would decompose, having all of that between them. You know, how long is that?
[00:16:24] Webster: Yeah, that’s a really good question. Lisa Carlson, who is the person who started the Funeral Consumers Alliance, who was a thorn in the industry’s side for many, many years, once said to me when we were talking about this very thing, she said, well, what do you think happens to them inside all of those boxes? I’m thinking primordial goo. (laugh) That was her answer, which I thought at the time was amazing. But the reality is that what’s going to happen in that circumstance, of course, is anaerobic decomposition, and I don’t think she’s too far off the mark, as opposed to a body that is in direct contact with all of the you know coffin beetles and microbial communities and fungi and so on.
[00:17:08] Fain: And oxygen.
[00:17:09] Webster: Yeah, lots of oxygen. Lots of good oxygen.
[00:17:12] Fain: So following on that, what are the environmental harms that are associated with the conventional burial that we’re doing now? Why shouldn’t we do that? Or should we do it?
[00:17:22] Webster: Well, the conventional burial is, again, if you take a look at all of the carbon emissions from the manufacture and the transportation of all of the materials that we’re using, you’re looking at an enormous amount of water that’s used to grow those perfectly manicured lawns. And you’re looking at, gosh, RoundUp alright, preservatives, pesticides, herbicides, all those types of things that are used in cemeteries to keep those lawns perfect, which, by the way, have huge effects on the cemetery workers. One of them is RoundUp, and that, as we know, there’s a class action suit that’s been floating around for a while. Cemetery workers are right in the forefront of that, this non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma that is caused by overexposure to these types of things. That’s what’s going on in our cemeteries. We’re filling them up with cement. We’re filling them up with metal, things that will never decompose. We’re using herbicides, pesticides, all the things that are really antithetical to anyone who wants to go out naturally and to leave as light a footprint on the earth when they leave as possible.
[00:18:32] Fain: So do those chemicals actually get into our food and water?
[00:18:37] Webster: Actually, yes. There’s something called cemetery plume, and for the most part, it is what we have discovered through studies all around the world, mostly in disaster areas where they’re able to study these things because, again, it’s all about quantity. When they take a look at that, the result has been that it’s quite clear all of these artifacts, all of these things that we’re putting in the ground with the body is what’s causing any kind of cemetery plume, any movement. It’s not a lot. It tends not to go too far, but again, in certain circumstances, and now with rising floodplains and that type of thing, we do need to be paying attention to it. But the thing to know is it’s the stuff we’re putting in the ground with the body, it’s not the body.
[00:19:16] Fain: Understood. What about space? I mean, we’ve been burying people for a long time. What happens? Are we running out of space? Is that something to worry about? And what is anybody doing about that? And is it real today or is it something for the future?
[00:19:31] Webster: Yeah, we are running out of space for vault burials in cities. That’s absolutely true. Are we running out of space for burial in the U.S.? Absolutely not. So the difference is, again, in switching our thinking around what we want to have happen here. If your goal is to have an environmentally friendly exit, are you willing to take a trip out of town, out of the city, right? And in fact, as we talk about this, as we go through cremation processes, we’ll be talking about human composting and other types of facilities that are million-dollar facilities being built in the city so that people can be trucked in and then trucked back out. And I’m thinking, geez, we could put those millions of dollars into just supporting people, giving people access to a burial out in the country. One trip, naturally done, to conserve that land and preserve it. So we have a lot of thinking to do around how we’re going to approach this.
[00:20:27] Fain: Well, let’s do talk about cremation. What’s happening with cremation around the world? Is it, I understand it’s becoming more popular, and why?
[00:20:37] Webster: Yeah, well, and that’s kind of a mixed bag too, to tell you the truth. Yeah, we’re looking at about 56 or so percent of the world is cremating right now. There’s a projection that we’re going to be up to 80 percent by about 2040. But what that doesn’t take into consideration are several factors. One is how we categorize green alternative methods and how we categorize cremation, cause I don’t think those factors have been involved in coming up with that number. The other thing that hasn’t helped with that number yet, but it’s about to, is the number of what we call cremation conversions that are occurring. Once people understand the issues around cremation processes, they go, oh gosh, I thought it was greener, but it’s not. I’m going to go back to the greenest thing I can find. So those numbers are going to change.
[00:21:27] Fain: Interesting. So is cremation an accepted practice by most of the major religions in the U.S. and globally?
[00:21:35] Webster: Yeah, it is not necessarily religion-based, but there are certainly different groups. Hindus, for instance, still view it as a purification ritual. It’s not just a body disposal method. Other religious groups like Muslims and Jews and even Quakers, these are people who have always believed that burial was the purest way to dispose a body. So I mean, there is an element to this, but part of what’s happening is that more people are making decisions based less on you know religious precepts than they are about wanting to be more environmentally friendly. So you could say that it’s the new religion.
[00:22:16] Fain: So it’s becoming more accepted?
[00:22:19] Webster: Yeah.
[00:22:20] Fain: So maybe there’s a disconnect. So what are the environmental harms of cremation right now that people may not be aware of even?
[00:22:27] Webster: Yeah, well, there’s a lot to be considering depending on which type of cremation process we’re talking about. So let’s start with flame cremation. There’s a tremendous amount of fossil fuel use. You’re looking at mostly natural gas, some propane, but you have to get the retort up to good hefty heat and maintain it for a period of time, usually two to three hours or so. Those of us who are old enough often have amalgam fillings in our teeth. When that is heated up, the mercury that’s in that amalgam goes right up the stacks and down into our waterways. There was a study in Minnesota a few years ago that came up with a number of about 14% of the mercury that’s found in our waterways is attributable to cremation retorts. You know, there are other things that are going on here. The final product is calcium phosphate and sodium. It’s bone. That’s all it is. It’s not ashes. That’s just a euphemism. It’s just bone. And what that means is, and it’s been incinerated. So any kind of nutrient that would be in bones, when we think of bone meal and that type of thing, you know, that’s good stuff. It’s part of the major fertilizer mix with nitrogen. So it’s a great thing. But once it’s been burned, all of those nutrients are locked or destroyed. So what are you going to do with those remains? Where do you put them? If you put them in the ground, they’re not going to further decompose and any kind of plant roots are going to do everything they can to avoid that sodium, that salt. So there are a whole lot of issues around what to do with what’s left over as much as you know what the process really is causing issues around. We’re also looking at phosphorus runoff and girdling trees and all kinds of things that happen, again, in quantity.
[00:24:08] Fain: So you talked about flame cremation, and of course there are other types of cremation now. What is the driving force behind those other processes?
[00:24:17] Webster: Yeah, and the other processes are alkaline hydrolysis and human composting. And I think that the main drive here, of course, is thinking that you’re going to be more environmentally friendly. The problem with it is that we’re still using fossil fuels to some degree. We’re also using, in the case of human composting, we’re using natural resources or harvested resources like alfalfa, wood chips, that type of thing. We’re using warm water in alkaline hydrolysis that has to be heated. That’s a fossil fuel process. We’re using potassium hydroxide in the alkaline solution. Things are happening that are better. Cytotoxins, the bombing fluid gets neutralized. Mercury gets captured with AAH. But the final product is more bone because it hasn’t been burned up and up to, usually not this much, but up to about 300 gallons of the effluent that’s left over. It has to go somewhere. Where it goes is into our wastewater treatment plants because there is no known way to dispose of this safely. And the USDA, the EPA, we’ve approached them to see what they’re going to do about you know managing this because they have all kinds of rules about moving compost and soil across state lines and what to do with different types of effluent. They don’t want anything to do with talking about this. So we’re stuck with the leftover pieces of this to try to figure out what’s going on. And with human composting, you know, the environmental pieces around that, as I said, have to do with that bulking agent material that has to come from somewhere. Part of that is alfalfa is mostly grown here in the US in the Colorado River Basin that is being drained for livestock feed growth. So that’s about 86% and about 32% of that is for alfalfa and a little bit for corn silage and that type of thing. So if we think we’re doing a greener thing, we have to be looking deeper at what goes into all of this. You know, what does it mean then to have your body, a 150-pound body, say, turned into a cubic yard of material? That’s a truckload of material that then has to be trucked out of town. What is the transportation picture to that and all that kind of thing? So I think it’s the question about you know what is it that makes it appealing to people? The idea that it’s greener than flame cremation. That’s been made very clear and I would agree with that. They are. But if we’re going to really dig deep, you know, if we’re going to make a decision, an important decision like this, we need to know all the facts. There’s a romantic piece to this too. People find that it’s a very romantic vision. Oh, I’ll be turned into compost. I’ll be part of the earth. You can plant a tree on top of me.
[00:27:00] Fain: Well, there’s some very compelling marketing campaigns that I’ve seen that make it look absolutely idyllic.
[00:27:07] Webster: They are. They have some really big bucks behind them.
[00:27:11] Fain: Other than the effluent and the transportation that you mentioned, are there other potential dangers of disposing of the cremated remains regardless of which cremation process there is?
[00:27:22] Webster: You know, I mean, there are. Again, in quantity, we don’t want to put it on the top of the ground because it can create big issues. There was one group that I knew about that was going to try and squeeze 10,000 cremated remains scatterings per acre in their area that was up-level from the town’s reservoir. Well, we’d be looking at that in the same way we would if you were looking at a farm up above a lake and that phosphorus runoff causing algae bloom and threatening marine life, that type of thing. So yeah, there are concerns, but again, it’s extenuating circumstances around it. The main issue is what do we do with these remains that make sense to us as humans? And, also, if we’re trying to make decisions to be more environmentally friendly around this and more environmentally responsible, you know, does it make sense to be tossing them in alpine areas with fragile plants, fragile flora? Does it make sense to be taking them to the national parks and dumping them, at this point, knee-high under the arches?
[00:28:22] Fain: Oh, it’s not delicious plant food is what you’re saying.
[00:28:25] Webster: This is not delicious plant food. This is heavy, dense bone with a lot of salt in it.
[00:28:30] Fain: So we mentioned earlier on about the funeral industry, and of course that’s a more than a billion-dollar industry, and how has the funeral industry as a whole responded to the increasing environmental concerns that they’re seeing, or have they responded?
[00:28:46] Webster: Yeah, first, it’s a $22 billion industry annually in the United States, and it’s a good question. How have they responded to these alternative methods? Well, there’s two different ways. First of all, it’s not their job. You know, they’re there to service families. They’re not there to build cemeteries. In fact, in some states, it’s illegal for them to own and operate cemeteries. They might own crematories. They might be able to own alkaline hydrolysis facilities, but some states are not going to let them do human composting. It’s just all over the place. So how do they feel about it? Most of the time, funeral directors are delighted if someone will create a circumstance where they’ll be able to offer this service to their families. That’s why they’re funeral directors. On the other side, we have a very entrenched service industry that doesn’t want to see change. They like things just the way they are. It all depends on who you’re talking to, but here’s an important piece to sort of toss in the middle of this. Over the last couple of years and for the next three years or so, about 60% of the funeral industry staff is leaving, whether they’re retiring or they’re moving into other more lucrative ventures. This is another thing. This is not particularly lucrative. People think it is. Funeral directors make about $300 less than a third-grade teacher. So the owners make the money, but the actual guys who do the work don’t make that much money. So they’re moving out, and who’s moving in is women. We’re looking between 72 and 82 percent of the new mortuary students are female. So how is that going? I think the bigger question is how is that going to change the industry? My guess is that they’re going to be younger. They’re going to be more interested in exploring new ways of doing things. How will the industry respond? I think that more and more they’re going to be very accepting and happy. They want to serve their people.
[00:30:39] Fain: That’s fascinating. It sounds like what’s happening and been happening in medicine as well. Could you go over what the different costs would be? How does the cost compare of all these different end-of-life processes that people have as an option?
[00:30:55] Webster: YeahI think the first one to start with is the standard American funeral. With a full burial and everything else, we’re talking between $8,000 and $18,000. If you distill that down to just the cemetery in a conventional cemetery, you’re still in the $4,000 to $5,000 or $6,000 range because you’ve got to cover caskets and vaults and plots and opening and closing fees and all those types of things. So it’s just what has made blind cremation really more affordable to people. The average price around that around the country is anywhere between $1,000 to $2,500 and up. It can go significantly higher. When we’re looking at alkaline hydrolysis, the price starts somewhere around $3,500. When we look at human composting, and that can be, there are two sets of numbers around that. One is for an urban environment, an urban facility, which starts somewhere between $3,500, $3,600, goes up to about $7,000. If, however, you go through a composting process that is not one of these multimillion-dollar facilities, it’s a plywood cradle with a hand crank, you’re stocking about $3,000. So if you add to that, then you’re taking a look at natural burial. We’re looking anywhere between, and I kid you not, I learned of a cemetery just the other day that’s selling plots for $10. That’s not the norm, but the norm in various states is somewhere between $300, $500 for the plot plus you know, whatever the opening and closing fees are and maybe even the grave digging. They might add that on. The consumer pays that. But we’re still pretty significantly low for the most part in municipal cemeteries that have green areas. What you want to look for when you go to a conservation level or other level is that the price might get up anywhere up into the $3,000 or $4,000 range. Know that that’s not just for the burial. Know that a lot of those fees are going to go to the land trust that’s in partnership. So what you’re doing is paying for the burial, but you’re also paying for conservation.
[00:33:01] Fain: That’s really important to be aware of, very helpful. Thank you so much, Lee, for bringing this topic to our listeners. I think it’s incredibly important and it’s been a pleasure to talk with you. This is the Voices in Bioethics podcast with Lee Webster. Please join us for the next podcast, where we’ll talk about alternative and eco-friendly options.