A Green Burial

Sustainable Minimalists

Bleav + Stephanie Seferian

Leisure, Parenting, Kids & Family, Home & Garden

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 14 February 2023

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The typical American funeral boasts exotic flowers, a coffin made of fancy wood, and formaldehyde-based embalming. But green burials require fewer resources and skip a number of unnecessary steps; they also tend to be less expensive. Today I speak with green mortician Elizabeth Fournier about alternatives to conventional burials and cremations that are easier on the planet. Here's a preview: [5:00] Exactly what's wrong from an environmental standpoint with standard burials and cremations [12:30] A brief history of embalming: Is it actually necessary? [19:00] Liner-free plots, conscious caskets, and more: The tenets of a green burial [28:30] How exactly does a green burial compare in terms of cost? [33:00] Everything you need to know about aqua cremation, burials at sea, and natural organic reduction Resources mentioned/Further reading: The Green Burial Guidebook: Everything You Need to Plan an Affordable, Environmentally Friendly Burial Elizabeth on Instagram @elizabethgreenreaper Let Your Love Grow Eternal Reefs -- * Join our (free!) community here. * Find your tribe. Sustainable Minimalists are on Facebook, Instagram + Youtube. * Email me and say hello! MamaMinimalistBoston@gmail.com. Our Sponsors:* Thank you to LifeStraw! https://lifestraw.com/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/sustainable-minimalists/exclusive-content

Transcript

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0:00.0	It has been a summer of self-care over here. I'm talking lots of hikes, lots of beach trips with the
0:06.4	sunscreen of course, you name it, I'm fitting it in before Labor Day. Wherever you're off to this summer, know that you're taking your microbiome with you. And seeds
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0:37.0	Support your gut this summer with seeds, DS01, daily symbiotic.
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0:49.0	That's 25% off your first month of seeds, DS01, daily symbiotic at seed.com slash sustainable,
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1:05.8	Hello everyone, welcome back. My name is Stephanie Safarian and you're listening to episode 344 of sustainable
1:10.8	minimalists, a twice weekly show about intentional and ecoimal Minimalist Living.
1:15.0	On today's show I am answering listener Denise's question
1:20.0	about green funerals and other environmentally friendly end of life decisions.
1:27.0	The more I host this podcast and the more experts I'm fortunate enough to interview, the more I understand that human beings tend to do things the way they've always
1:39.7	been done. We're not a species that tends to question the status quo, are we? This is especially true when it comes to issues surrounding death and burial.
1:51.0	The traditional funeral in the United States is expensive with the average
1:56.0	being around $10,000. And then on top of that there are the environmental issues.
2:02.4	Every year conventional funerals bury millions of tons of
2:06.2	wood, often fancy wood, concrete and metals as well as millions of gallons of carcinogens, those embalming fluids.
2:16.3	Conventional cremation isn't much better.
2:18.6	Heating up those ovens requires an awful lot of energy. Cremation in a crematory carries a carbon footprint
2:26.2	equivalent to that of a 500-mile car trip. And that's to say nothing about the ashes,
	...

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