Is cremation better for the environment than burial?

It’s a trade off of the energy used in cremation vs. the land space for burial. It takes quite a few BTUs to reduce a human body to ash, but cemetaries also take up what would otherwise be prime agricultural land (unless above-ground mausoleums in waste ground are used). Seeing as there are disadvantages to both, it is a personal choice. As my beloved is buried in the family plot,with 9 generations of my ancestors, that is my option as well.

Cremation is a lot worse for the environment. Burial is the natural way that has been occurring for hundreds of thousands of years on this planet. There’s a whole world of teensy tinseys under the ground just waiting to feast on you. Whereas with cremation, your body becomes carbon and particulate matter in the atmosphere to irritate my asthma and warm the planet even more.

You might want to invest in a coffin which doesn’t contain toxic chemicals intended to stall decomposition… that’s the kind of stuff you don’t want leaking out of a graveyard.

You are made of bodies. You are made of decomposed animals, plants. Every cell in your body is made up of atoms that were once parts of other things. Decomposition is natural and isn’t anything to be afraid of. Your water is already full of dead things.

The planet isn’t new. You are made of star stuff. You are recycled. It’s only appropriate to recycle our bodies back in to the system.

Crematoriums are problematic because you have to leave them running all the time and it pumps mercury in to the atmo. A significantly better idea is to not be embalmed, and get yourself buried in the cardboard/plywood box you would normally be cremated in. The true ideal is actually a method that hopefully will be coming to the united states at some point and will allow you or your loved one to essentially live on as a plant.

A healthy life and death cycle = a healthy planet.

GA, @delirium. There are also places that make “green” caskets and burial shrouds.

I’m hoping to do something like that if the ecological burials haven’t yet come in to the united states (and if I don’t donate my body to science, but there will ideally be bits missing when all is said and done because I am an organ donor and I am not sure if many institutions particularly want already cut up cadavers).

@delirium Wonderful info and GA. There are some small areas in the U.S. now where one can bury directly in the soil with no embalming. I have seen two short news clips about it, but haven’t the memory to tell you where! It may be a growing idea: reverting to a natural way of treating our dead. I find it refreshing.

Um, guys? Jews are not embalmed. They just keep us on ice and put us in the ground quickly. You always have that option, too. delerium, thanks for that! I think I have to go change my will now.

@wildpotato Jews on Ice? Is that Disney?

Once I’m dead…I don’t think that I’ll really give a crap about the environment. Stick me in a pine box with my boots on.

Cremation of silver/mercury fillings is a danger.

And 110 lbs of greenhouse gases per body (which I assume is an average). Not to mention all the other crud that goes into a body, from Twinkies to artificial hips – we’re not as pure as we used to be.

On the other hand, a lot of crap goes into the ground when we bury someone. Every year in the United States 22,500 cemeteries bury:
827,060 gallons of embalming fluid (including formaldehyde)
104,272 tons of steel for caskets and vaults, enough to build another Golden Gate Bridge!
2,700 tons of copper and bronze for more caskets
30 plus million board feet of hardwoods
1,636,000 tons of concrete . . .

and if it’s sealed as tight as it’s supposed to be, we don’t decompose at all, but instead become human soup. Ewww.

It seems like a wash, as far as what happens with burial and cremation. And with so many people in the world, it’s worse by numbers. It would seem like the most environmentally friendly way to dispose of a corpse would be the sky burial. Let the vultures eat the flesh and bury the inert bones.

Yeah probably. Cremation is only accelerated oxidation and it’s got the advantage that you can control the process.
I prefer cremation over burial because I think it’s cold in the ground and I prefer hot souls.

…and have the rotting body juices leaking into your water supply?

And a septic system does what again…..

I went to a school within breathing distance of a local crematorium. If you have never smelled humans burning then you just don’t know. Bury em or deep six em, but quit cremating em…

@Kelly_Obrien uhhh yikes