Death is a big bummer. But chemicals used to preserve dead bodies are a big bummer, too.

Luckily, there are some folks who are dedicated to finding ways to “green” death. One way: placing a dead body in a compost bin and turning it into compost. Really.

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ColumnConscious life, hear me roar.

I have just returned back home from running around Manhattan and New York Fashion Week. As you might imagine, an intense week full of long legged runway models, moody designer presentations, and the deep bass beats of stylish music gives New York City the air of theater, sex, and retail desire. It’s also a week-long voyeuristic sneak peak at what we all hope to be wearing next spring and summer when emerging from our winter cocoons.

Fashion is sexy. It serves as both a transformative power pill and a retreat for the world-weary. It’s a place we can go to to become stronger by the very clothes we wear and in lieu of the fact that our inner strength isn’t enough. Power is sexy. If you think I am wrong, point me to the runway show you’ve been to recently that shows women hunched over in house dresses looking down at the ground from nerves.

Fashion is all about power and I couldn’t help thinking about it this past week. There were even times when photographing shows I put the camera down a little in order to see the model walking at me with my own eyes instead of through a lens. Some of them reeked of this confidence so much that I laughed out loud. It’s their job to trick us into believing that a certain look is all we need to get by in this world. It is their job to act as a visual representation of a designer’s ideal, a paper doll with folded tabs that takes off and puts on outfits that when our own, will help in terms of better jobs, business deals, romance and getting the job done.

While I am lucky to be covering sustainable fashion 99% of the time, where designer’s “About Us” pages tout social responsibility, closed loop technologies and organically grown fabrics, most of the fashion industry is just not there. Nor does it really care to be.

Case in point, waking to a story this morning on the Pakistan garment factory fire that has left (as of the writing of this column) 289 dead. In this, the biggest industrial accident in the country’s history, we are left to scratch our heads and wonder how this could be or maybe we don’t want to look at it too closely at the risk that it will tell us something about ourselves.

The “Inspection of industrial units by the provincial labor department was mandatory under the rules until 1997 when it was banned after demands by influential industrialists in the Sindh and Punjab provinces,” Shujah-ud-Din, a senior research associate at the Pakistan Institute of Labour, Education and Research, told Bloomberg by phone from Karachi. Factory accidents also claimed 419 lives in 2008.

The Karachi garment factory itself had locked fire exits, barred windows and there wasn’t a sprinkler in site. A single staircase connecting four floors became kindling for a boiler in the factory that burst into flames, engulfing all floors that were connected to it. Workers chopped away at the bars with tools to jump from 4th story windows – pregnant women, old men, nephews, aunts. People trying to make a living so that society could wear something new.

I recently interviewed Elizabeth Cline, author of Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion. Cline told me, “To our credit, it took consumers several decades to be convinced that they no longer wanted to own beautifully made clothing and to make them forget that $20 does not in any way buy a well-crafted garment.”

In a fast fashion crazed society, where we want more, faster, cheaper, we will always have stories like this in the headlines. Hard-working people who will accept being modern day slaves to put food on the table and a roof over their heads.

You will read all the headlines on this factory fire story and it will stay with you for a bit, until you need a new shirt, a pair of boots or a party dress. You might even consider the tragedy when you walk through the front doors of your favorite fast fashion chain. But you probably won’t be able to stop yourself once you hear the deep bass beat from the well-positioned speakers, the beads and bold colors merchandised like candy, the other women around you, arms laden with pretty dresses at $19.99, and how could you?

You were conditioned to shop this way. But let me tell you something, I think you can start walking past these stores, in fact, I think you can stay out of the mall entirely. I think you can plan ahead and look for the right designers who don’t have factories like this – who pay their workers fairly, who let them work from home who don’t treat them like animals.

People often tell me I can shop responsibly because I know so many designers, I just “know how to do it.”

But knowing how to “do it,” and realizing one has a responsibility to “do it,” are two completely different things. One requires making a call to the eco-boutique or hitting the local consignment shop and the other? Well, that requires lowering the camera and looking at life with a real-life lens.

It requires considering not just yourself, but the lives of many others.

Between the Lines is a weekly column by EcoSalon’s Editor-in-Chief on navigating the sometimes-sharp, sometimes-blurred lines of conscious life and culture between city and country, between inner worlds and outer.

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ColumnConscious life, hear me roar.

“I want to go ahead of Father Time with a scythe of my own.” – H.G. Wells

My oldest brother, whom I had not talked to or seen in some 10 years, just left my house. For years, I’ve envisioned all the things I wanted to tell him. All that mess that went down when he left, how we all had to pick up the pieces, how I felt bound to hold everyone together and make them see the lighter side of things, but I didn’t.
I saw him standing in my home, looking the spitting image of my father, and hugged him and cried while he, big brother style, tried to make me laugh.

It takes a lot in this world to be human. To let go of anger and mend bridges we thought were burned or too weak to ever repair. To let time be the true salve for our hurts and realize that ultimately, life keeps propelling us all forward.

But oh, that in-between time of figuring it all out.

I started writing this column on Wednesday and it was to be on how much happens in a week of our lives. The idea came to me on Christmas when my grandfather died, gathered speed when my estranged brother called my mother to say he was sorry for her loss, held steady when my dearest friend called to tell me he was separating from his beautiful wife and crashed hard when my second oldest brother had a nervous breakdown Tuesday night from all the stress.

In just a week, life hung in a precarious place, diverging into two roads where at one juncture the potential for a complete emotional apocalypse was readily available and at the other, a place of learning and growth. By Thursday, I’d strapped on my sneakers and headed out into the cold morning to run until I couldn’t take it. Stop and go, stop and go, catching my breath, losing it all again, pushing, sweating and finally crying while running, realizing that no matter what happens in this world, I am in control of how I react within it. We all are. It just hurts sometimes, these pit stops in rest areas we didn’t expect to pull into.

Tomorrow is a new day and the Bufflehead ducks on the pond at the bottom of my street will be pushing through the water, quietly looking for food. Every morning when I walk the dog I stand there and take them in and watch the long slants of sun breaking across the water. All along the water’s edge they swim in groups, diving underneath for food in the dark silence they always come up out of. Sometimes, I hold my breath without realizing it until they pop back up and are safe in the warm sun. Until I know they are back with their feathered clan pushing further out into the blue, where they live without my help.

Between the Lines is a weekly column navigating the sometimes-sharp, sometimes-blurred lines of life and culture between city and country.

Image: S-A-M

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ColumnConscious life, hear me roar.

The night before Thanksgiving, my family was safely tucked in their beds all under one roof. With my parents visiting for the holiday, we play a little bed scramble: My mom always takes my daughter’s bed upstairs, my daughter and I sleep in my bed, my husband sleeps on the couch, my son in his own bed and my dad, down in the guest room where he can snore his nostrils off in the peace of a well-insulated room.

At around 4 a.m. Thanksgiving morning, my mother came rushing into my bedroom and whispered that there was an ambulance out front. My room had become a carnival of lights swirling round. I jumped out of bed, threw on my winter boots and jacket, and ran out the door into the dark cold with tears already streaming down my face.

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know what was going on.

My neighbor, Imelda, is 91 and is at that point where sometimes she forgets our names, will tell the same story after five minutes and likes tight hugs where she never once did. This is a woman who has been a surrogate great-grandmother to my children for 13 years, has babysat, given me cups of flour and sugar and listened to me over coffee when I felt no one else would.

She is most certainly my friend, but fears for my life in the ever after as I have different beliefs from her. In fact, we’ve had a secret pact for years that whoever dies first has to do something like knock a book or a glass off a ledge to prove there’s an after life. She always laughs and says she knows she’ll go first but I tell her life is pretty random. You never know when a safe could be falling out a window…

In the cold, I stood at the foot of her gravel driveway, a place where we often meet and chat; moments later, her son (visiting from North Carolina) came out to brief me.

A basic need to use the bathroom had resulted in her falling, hitting her skull on a side bed table, striking open an artery and her son walking in to find his mother lying in a pool of blood – still trying to press her necklace that alerts people somewhere, that a 91-year-old woman needs help and might just die if they don’t come quick.

“They’re taking her to the hospital now,” he said looking at me for an answer.

If you’ve ever stood at night bathed in ambulance light, you might know that feeling of how fleeting life is – that we are always at the mercy of fate.

In that moment of cold, being half-asleep and looking from the outside in to her home, I felt such remorse for how busy I’ve been with work and family that I couldn’t have visited with her more the past six months just to sit and have coffee, bring her something hot to eat, play a hand of Gin Rummy and tease her that there’s no god.

Helpless, I walked across the street, kicked off my boots, hung my coat and snuggled back in with my daughter who was still sweetly sleeping and sighing in her dreams.

Later that morning, Imelda’s son came in to tell us that she was going to be all right, but remain in the hospital for a few days. That she was lucky. That she was as feisty as ever and wanted to go home.

When she does return, I will visit with her by her wood stove and make fun of her as she drinks whiskey from a styrofoam cup, while she deals me a weak hand and waxes passionately about why I need faith, need to stop leaving my family to go to New York City so much, need to put a new coat of paint on my house.

In the ticking of the warm room, I can look into her eyes knowing a secret. You see, one of her biggest dreams has always been that someone would find her interesting enough to write about; to know that she made an impact in this life that surpassed a girlhood in Grand Falls, New Brunswick where she married young, had five kids and “did her best.”

In this life, she has been everything to me, has never cared about my life as a fashion writer or editor, just that she matters to me.

This week’s column is dedicated to Imelda Morin, a 4’8″ woman from Canada who hates swearing, blasphemy and loose women.
Who I gave thanks to on Thursday at dinner, along with my entire family, that she’s still alive as you read this.

Between the Lines, is a weekly column navigating the sometimes-sharp, sometimes-blurred lines of life and culture between city and country.

Image: Horia Valdan

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I know this sounds lame, but getting a Valpak in the mail is a special occasion at my house. I have a deep and inexplicable fondness for the packets that arrive at my door filled with coupons and promotional materials for a variety of sad-sack local businesses. A recent mailing offered discounts from the usual collection of low-rent retailers: shady chimney sweeps, lesser-known frozen yogurt chains, and family restaurants on the verge of bankruptcy. But stuck in the middle of these was a real surprise: a coupon advertising Sharon Gardens, a cemetery not far from my home.

I wasn’t quite sure what I should do with this offer – except maybe increase my consumption of hollandaise and cigarettes. Or else I could merge onto the interstate with my eyes tightly shut. Ten percent off my eternal rest? Pass the bacon!

As much as I like a bargain, it was hard for me to get excited about this particular coupon; besides its grim overtones, it stirred up all of my deep-seated environmental objections to cemeteries. Grave sites need a huge amount of ongoing maintenance – and all that mowing, cutting, cleaning, and watering requires an enormous expenditure of labor and natural resources. Then there are the gnarlier consequences of burying bodies: studies have shown that the human corpses in cemeteries can cause water pollution as the “products of decomposition” pass through the soil and into the groundwater. And with some regions of the country facing shortages of undeveloped land, there is the troubling issue of dead people using up lots of really prime real estate.

To address these problems, environmentalists have begun advocating something called a “Green Burial” as EcoSalon’s Scott Adelson discussed here. This involves carting bodies out into the wilderness where they are buried without coffins as a way to save trees. In this type of burial the dearly departed are wrapped in a bio-degradable shroud, and they are not embalmed, thereby minimizing the likelihood that harmful chemicals will seep into the ground. Instead of a tombstone, each grave site is marked with a tree. Green burials have been slow to catch on – possibly because people are notoriously squeamish when it comes to death-related traditions. Also, it’s hard to get people amped up about an event that will take place when they no longer have a pulse.

In the meantime, I remain mightily bewildered about the marketing plan that led to mailing out discount coupons for burials. Still, I am going to hang on to my coupon – I have found it to be a great ice-breaker at parties – although I don’t plan on ever having to use it.

Despite the rumored inevitability of death, I possess the secret, happy knowledge that I myself am somehow different – special and singularly blessed with an exemption from mortality. It’s too bad for the rest of you, but I really believe, deep down, that I am never going to die.

It’s almost a shame though – I hate to waste a perfectly good coupon.

Image: sdc2027

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Not too long ago we told you about some ecologically friendly ways to go – literally, as in how to do away with that pretty corpse of yours in a manner that’s best for the environment. Some of those options were for those of you interested in the eco-ashes to eco-ashes route. But this begs the next question: What to do with those cindery remains? The Answer is clear (cue music”¦ no, really): Turn them into a record album for your loved ones to spin and spin and spin again – forever and ever! (Okay, maybe not so clear. But funky, though, huh?)

Meet And Vinyly, my vote-getter in the run-up-to-Halloween race for most macabre and inventive company. What these twisted, though seemingly respectful Brits do is take some or all of what you leave behind and press it into “a vinyl recording your family with cherish for generations.” Your last expression can include anything you like, such as a final personal message (your last will and testament, for example), your own “soundtrack,” or nothing at all – “simply press your ashes to hear your pops and crackles for the minimal approach.” (I wonder if you would need to buy rights to the music you use. Could you get sued? Would you care? What would an aggrieved record label do? Confiscate your record and, um, burn it?)

The basic package is for up to 30 discs and includes standard “R.I.V” cover artwork and record label with your name, birthday and deathday. You supply the audio and get someone to bring in your remaining remains (they require personal delivery, so make sure you leave a trip to London to some lucky pal in your will). You only get 12 minutes a side, so if you’re rushed for time, well… The cost? Basic starts at about $4,800. I know. Cold.

That said, if you’re willing to throw down about twice that fee, you can up your in by having National Portrait Galley award-winning artist James Hague paint your portrait with acrylic and ash (yes, yours) on canvas. Your album covers will then be made from limited edition prints of the original portrait. To do this, you can simply supply a photo or “arrange a one hour sitting with James, before you die.” (Lord, I love the English.)

Here’s how it works (and in this order, by the way.):

1. Confirm your location and the viability of these services in your area.
2. Identify a family member or chosen rep who will accompany you (your ashes) to the pressing.
3. Establish audio content and cover art.
4. Attend the mastering of your record.
5. Receive playable proof sample of your record and cover.
6. Die.
7. Get cremated.
8. Your family member or chosen rep books and attends the sprinkling and pressing of your records.
9. Your chosen recipients are sent details of where to collect their copy of your personal record.
10. Live on from beyond the groove.

In a recent e-mail exchange with And Vinyly’s “Undertaker,” Discovery News asked him how he came up with the album concept: “The idea came through personal considerations about the inevitable,” he said. -¦ I began to get glimmers that perhaps I wasn’t invincible after all. I saw a story on an American chap who had his ashes put into fireworks for his family to enjoy. I loved this idea. I began to see that death does need serious consideration, but that this could be done in a light-hearted way. Our concept provides immortality in sound.”

There are way too many silly puns on And Vinyly’s website to even begin to try to compete with them here for some clever close. I’ll just punt to their tagline: “Death to Vinyl.” Sounds like a plan.

Image: Wouter de Bruijn

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Have you given your corpse much thought? I don’t mean to go all post mortem on you, but talk about the ultimate carbon footprint. For those of you concerned with your green legacy, you may want to take some time to consider your final leave behind. Let’s explore the options, shall we?

Traditional burial is a good place to start. Back to the earth, goin’ compost, food for Gaia.

According to CemetarySpot, each year 22,500 U.S. cemeteries sink about 827,060 gallons of embalming fluid (read: formaldehyde and other hazardous chemicals) six feet under. Meanwhile, buried caskets account for 90,272 tons of steel, 2,700 tons of copper and bronze, and more than 30 million board-feet of hardwoods. And here’s a fun fact: Casket manufacturers have made the EPA’s top-50 hazardous waste generators list, primarily due to their use of methyl and xylene in “the protective finish sprayed on the caskets exterior.” (Um, protection from”¦?)

And for those of you thinking about an above-ground approach, cremation and burial vaults account for about 1,636,000 tons of reinforced concrete and 14,000 tons of steel. In either case, land-use and transportation issues top off these not-so-eco-friendly end-of-life choices.

Then there’s cremation.

Now we’re really talking ashes to ashes. Burn me up, scatter me around, it’ll be just like nothing ever happened. You may be surprised to learn that a lot of people like this idea. Findtut notes: “75 percent of people in the U.K. are cremated after they die, while in the U.S. the figure has risen from 25 percent in 2000 to approximately 35 percent today.” But not so fast, green-dead wannabes: Each cremation produces about 330 pounds of CO2, of which about 220 pounds comes from burning the body and the coffin. Cremations also give off nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter, mercury (dental fillings!), hydrogen fluoride, hydrogen chloride, non-methane volatile organic compounds, and other heavy metals. Some sources says that crematoria contribute 0.2 percent of the global emission of dioxins and furans.

Bottom line for the end of the line?

These usual ways to go leave something to be desired. But never fear, the “green burial” niche is booming, says Tonic. The site reports that “eco-friendly burial grounds are opening their gates around the country,” and that the Green Burial Council recently named almost 300 funeral homes that offer environmentally friendly check-out options, up from a mere 12 at the beginning in 2008.

Perhaps the simplest option for a green burial is just doing your best to mind your matter. Digital Journal quotes Cynthia Beal of The Natural Burial Company as saying that a body should be “buried in a simple container made of biodegradable material such as bamboo, wicker, or cardboard which allows the body to decompose and return to the earth gradually and naturally. In some cases the body may only be wrapped in a simple shroud, left to return to the earth in a natural way.”

Over in the chemistry department, however, other more interesting options are cropping up.

For example, there’s the new (unless you’re a Breaking Bad type) trend of alkaline hydrolysis, a.k.a. dissolving bodies with lye. This is a hot topic right now in California, where a new law allowing the funeral business to do this as a matter of routine is making its way through the legislature. In this process, explains the Fresno Bee, mortuaries can dissolve you (Did I say “you?” Sorry.), through a combination of water pressure, heat and alkalinity, a process nicely dubbed “bio-cremation.” The whole thing takes just a few hours and emits no pollution or greenhouse gases. Bones, however, “would not be dissolved by the process, but they would be pulverized or processed for placement into an urn for loved ones.” It’s good to be informed.

Another fun choice is being offered by a Glasgow-based company called Resomation, which has come up with an approach that uses less energy than cremation and emits less CO2 by dissolving a body in sodium hydroxide at about 350 degrees. (A well-known temp for you cooks out there. Yum.) According to Findhut, the procedure produces just about 150 pounds of CO2 per body (that’s less than half of that from “usual cremation”) and has been approved for use in five U.S. states, but not yet back home in the U.K.

Last up in today’s cheerful story is Cryomation, based in Woodbridge, U.K., which, in the spirit of cool Dr. Science experiment, simply freezes remains at -319 degrees Fahrenheit with the help of a little handy-dandy liquid nitrogen, then powders the body and discards any leftover metal. The remains are then dried in a vacuum and sterilized. That way – insert drum roll here – they can be used as fertilizer! This method emits just about 100 pounds of CO2  per body.

When it comes to a green afterlife, shop around. There are a number of different ways you can go. Oh, lord, stop me…

Image: Paul and Jill

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Will your years of good green living end with a natural, good green death?

It’s a sensitive topic – so sensitive, many of us can’t embrace it. I cringed some years back when my book group chose to read Mary Roach’s Stiff: Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. The last thing I wanted to do was cuddle up with a read about how to dispose of our bodies: donating organs to eager medical school students, cremation, wrapping remains in biodegradable burial shrouds before returning them to the earth. Still, I managed to trudge through it.

Stiff, published at the height of HBO’s Six Feet Under craze, introduced me to the notion of natural burials and got me thinking about such choices. You should consider them as well.

According to the Centre for Natural Burial in Canada, the modern concept for this alternative approach first began in the UK in 1993 and has since spread globally. A relatively new idea, it focuses on methods that conserve, sustain and protect the earth from which we came and shall return. In other words, your concern for the planet (driving a hybrid, sparing landfills of bad plastics, using reusable shopping bags) doesn’t have to die when your time has come.

The body is prepared for burial in a simple shroud or placed in a biodegradable casket made of locally harvested wood, wicker or recycled paper. No embalming chemicals are used to prepare the body, natural markers like shrubs and trees replace headstones, and burial grounds are often protected preserves in which the natural burial protects and restores nature. There’s no need for irrigation, herbicides or pesticides to sustain the habitat.

The benefits to the planet are obvious, but is it right for your family? “It’s a big leap for some and a thankful change for others,” observes Kathy Curry of the Fernwood Funeral Home in upscale and earthy Mill Valley, California. Fernwood’s natural burials are located on a diverse, 32-acre site adjacent to the Golden Gate National Recreation areas. “It really appeals to environmentalists and people looking to do something more simple, people who don’t like the excess of a big fancy casket and funeral.”

Indeed, the metal caskets and other excesses of conventional burials are taking a huge ecological toll on our planet, according to Joe Sehee of the Green Burial Council, considered the green standard for eco-friendly burial methods in the United States. “We are burying some 800,000 gallons of fluids known to contain carcinogens, along with enough metal each year to rebuild the Golden Gate Bridge and enough concrete to fill a two-lane highway,” he told me. “The lid is being lifted on what we are spending and wasting, and that is what we are trying to get away from.”

Sehee sees the concept moving into the mainstream quickly with supply having trouble keeping up with demand, including a surge in green cremation practices, up from 3% in the 1960’s to as high as 70% in parts of California and almost 50% nationally. “Most people don’t want to impede the process of regeneration by embalming and spending $5,000 on a box, which is what we have been doing over the last 100 years in the industry,” he says.

The recession could also increase the trend. At Fernwood, you might spend $7,500 on a natural burial while an ornate burial can cost well over $20,000. Curry points out that in the U.S., some plots alone sell for as much as $60,000.

Meantime, those opting for green should be careful, suggests Sehee, who warns some mortuaries falsely advertise chemical-free and healthy grasses, but are guilty of green washing. One reason his council was established was to keep the once underground movement of alternative burials well above board.

Image: batega

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