Carole Dunham, 69, loved the ocean. Last July, she was diagnosed with cancer and had only a few months to live. Dunham knew her last footprint had to be a green one, and she started looking into eco-friendly alternatives to traditional burial.
The concept of "going green" has taken new life in the death care industry as eco-minded companies tap into the needs of those like Dunham.
From biodegradable caskets to natural burial sites, death is becoming less of a dark matter than a green one.
Dunham, an avid scuba diver, chose an eco-friendly company that would combine her cremated remains to form an artificial memorial reef.
"She loved the idea of always being in the water as an alternative to being cremated and scattered," said her daughter Nina Dunham.
Dying is arguably the most natural phenomenon in the world, but modern death rituals -- embalming with formaldehyde-based solutions and traditional burial in concrete vaults -- are not nature-friendly, according to environmentalists.
Along with its dead, the United States buries 1.6 million tons of reinforced concrete, 827,060 tons of toxic embalming fluid, 90,000 tons of steel (from caskets), and 30 million tons of hardwood board each year, according to the Green Burial Council, an independent nonprofit organization based in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
"We can rebuild the Golden Gate Bridge with that amount of metal," said Joe Sehee, the council's executive director. "The amount of concrete is enough to build a two-lane highway from New York to Detroit."
Sehee established a burgeoning network of death-care providers that have earned a green thumbs-up in the council's eco-certification program, the first of its kind in the industry.
"We want to reduce carbon emissions, waste and toxins in the death care industry and utilize burial to steward natural areas in the U.S.," said Sehee.
Among the certified eco-providers is Eternal Reefs, based in Decatur, Georgia.
"We're the surf and turf of natural burial," said George Frankel, CEO of Eternal Reefs.
The company takes the green movement to sea level by offering a living legacy in the form of underwater reefs used to create new marine habitats for fish and other sea life. The artificial reefs are cast from a mixture of environmentally safe cement and cremated remains.
Eternal Reefs was the logical choice for Dunham, who died on November 3. "She liked the idea of being a home for fish," said her daughter.
