Elizabeth Fournier - The Green Burial Guidebook: Everything You Need to Plan an Affordable, Environmentally Friendly Burial

Praise for The Green Burial Guidebook

The landscape of death care is shifting, and Elizabeth Fournier is a wonderful guide. She brings us gently through green burials, home funerals, and more. The Green Burial Guidebook is essential for anyone planning for a sustainable death-care experience.

Katrina Spade, founder of Recompose

The Green Burial Guidebook is an engaging primer for first-timers looking to understand the fundamentals of the rapidly changing world of end-of-life and after-death care practices and possibilities. Through firsthand stories and insider savvy, Elizabeth Fournier has laid out some of the most doable, practical steps, choices, and skills you will need for planning your final affair. Thoughtful, well organized, and easy to take in.

Lee Webster, home funeral and green burial advocate and editor of Changing Landscapes: Exploring the Growth of Ethical, Compassionate, and Environmentally Sustainable Green Funeral Service

Elizabeth Fournier continues to help change the landscape of death care as we know it today. A wonderful guide for the layperson and funeral professional alike, The Green Burial Guidebook is a comprehensive treasure trove of information and personal experiences. It sheds light on the cemetery industry and the grassroots movement that seeks to return after-death care to what it used to be: families lovingly caring for their deceased in a final act of kindness. Bravo!

Ed Bixby, president of the Green Burial Council and owner of Steelmantown Cemetery and Purissima Natural Burial Grounds

Elizabeth Fournier introduces The Green Burial Guidebook as a simple, straightforward guide, and it is but its also much more. This book is lovely, thoughtful, and beautifully crafted, and Fournier is the gracious guide at your side. She walks you through what it takes to make a loved ones green burial both uplifting and down-to-earth. The what, when, where, why, who, and how? Shes got them covered. Read The Green Burial Guidebook not only for all youll learn but for the message of hope and joy it brings.

Mary Woodsen, founding president of Greensprings Natural Cemetery Preserve and advisory board member of the Green Burial Council

A straightforward handbook on more sustainable and meaningful death care in the United States and how to plan for it.

Suzanne Kelly, PhD, author of Greening Death: Reclaiming Burial Practices and Restoring Our Tie to the Earth

Elizabeth Fourniers Green Burial Guidebook will change the way you think about death. The book is an informative and consoling read, offering tips and tools that will endure through the years. Fournier speaks with candor and kindness, as if she were seated right beside us at our kitchen table. She teaches about the realities and sacred possibilities in green burial, offering a life-affirming guide for those who wish to have a deeper connection to the earth, to the natural processes of life and death, and to their beloveds.

Lisa Smartt, author of Words at the Threshold and founder of the Final Words Project (www.finalwordsproject.org)

The Green Burial Guidebook speaks to one of the deepest responsibilities of being human: caring for and burying our dead. This friendly guide will help you consider how your approach to death can be kinder to the earth and leave your community stronger.

Holly Pruett, life-cycle celebrant, home funeral guide, and Death Talk Project founder (www.hollypruettcelebrant.com and www.deathtalkproject.com)

Truly everything you need to plan a green send-off. A lively, informative, and uplifting book.

Mark Harris, author of Grave Matters: A Journey through the Modern Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial

Copyright 2018 by Elizabeth Fournier

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, or other without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

The material in this book is intended for education. It is not meant to take the place of legal advice from a licensed attorney.

Text design by Tona Pearce Myers

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available.

First printing, May 2018

ISBN 978-1-60868-523-3

Ebook ISBN 978-1-60868-524-0

Printed in Canada on 100% postconsumer-waste recycled paper

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In loving remembrance of my gentle parents who shine their light on me from above. I am truly nothing without you.

CONTENTS

, as natural and predictable as being born. But whereas birth is cause for celebration, death has become a dreaded and unspeakable issue to be avoided by every means possible in our modern society. Perhaps it is that death reminds us of our human vulnerability in spite of all our technical advances. We may be able to delay it, but we cannot escape it.

Elisabeth Kbler-Ross

D espite amazing advances in medical science and technology, the mortality rate for human beings stands at a whopping 100 percent. Its a fact: All of us are going to die someday. Yet in the face of this statistical reality, we are often unprepared when death arrives. When death claims those we love, we struggle with our grief, seek comfort from relatives and friends, and cling to the accepted, society-approved ways to celebrate and memorialize a persons life all while managing the unfamiliar, stressful tasks of funeral and burial arrangements.

Yet our modern burial customs often fall short of our needs. The typical ceremony run by a funeral home one that involves embalming and a casket burial in a traditional cemetery not only can fail to provide a satisfying ritual for mourning, but it frequently leaves behind lasting financial and ecological burdens. Traditional burials can become very expensive, and they usually lead to environmental damage. Yet in the upheaval of the moment, we often make choices that are more elaborate and expensive than we want or need because we dont realize we have options: options to simplify, options to be more hands-on, options to go green. Weve become convinced that parting with lots of money as our final gift to someone that allows them to eternally rest in peace is just the way it is and the way its always been.