A green and modest death with the Acorn Urn
So maybe the Ecopod is a little out of your price range, or you have an ethical objection to using up perfectly good ground after you're dead. (Those pesky ethical questions about personal means versus personal needs versus treading lightly on the planet versus one's interactions with one's fellow man, they can be surprisingly complicated. Who'd'a thunk a blog with so many shoe reviews would be so philosophically complex? We're deep, I tellya. As deep as we are tangential.) Well, at £45 from Nigel's Eco Store for this recycled newspaper, fully biodegradeable ARKA Acorn Urn, even Grandma Millie can have a green funeral.
Instead of a plastic urn, the Acorn is made from compressed newspaper and the finish is done by hand. Like regular newspaper it'll keep pretty well if it's dry and kept somewhere safe, and like regular newspaper it'll start biodegrading pretty nicely if you put it somewhere wet (like, say, in the ground). Given these things are basically elaborate papier-mache, there's a strong argument to be made that all funeral homes should be required to carry (if not the Acorn necessarily) biodegradeable urns. Given we biodegrade, why shouldn't they?
[GT]
We had a paper urn for my Mum's ashes, it had petals within the paper. It was burried under a tree. She also had an eco coffin made from willow. We painted a cardboard nameplate for it. The willow coffin was shockingly expensive from our funeral director. But we found one on-line for less http:www.naturalendings.co.uk/willow-bamboo-coffins-buy.htm . Some crematoriums are more environmentally friendly than others because they have been told that they have to be modernised to cut emissions, some have done so already like ours in Manchester. We found the Natural Death Centre very helpful with information www.naturaleath.org.uk
Posted by: jess | July 30, 2007 6:49 PM