When death comes: New York part of a growing movement to say greener goodbyes

Apr. 22—When death comes, more people are going green.

Environmental advocates, funeral directors, cemetery administrators and religious leaders agree that people are longing for a deeper connection to the Earth in death rituals. For some, a return to simplicity — some dirges and dirt. For others, a hybrid of tradition and modernity.

"It's a little gritty, death is," the Rev. Bryan D. Stitt, Canton, said. "And that's OK."

The movement to level with that grittiness is picking up across the country, with varying shades of green funerals. That could mean fewer chemicals in the embalming process, no embalming at all, a gathering at home, a natural burial that doesn't delay decomposition. Green funerals might involve a woven casket or biodegradable urn.

And green funerals could now mean returning to the Earth as compost.

Natural organic reduction — colloquially called human composting — has only become a regulated option in a handful of states since Washington made the move in 2019. After Colorado, Oregon, Vermont and California, New York became the sixth state to legalize facilities earlier this year.

All but two state senators voted in favor of the legislation early last summer, and assemblymembers voted 98-52. Gov. Kathleen C. Hochul's signature followed in December.

Natural organic reduction, as defined by New York's law, "accelerates the process of biological decomposition in an above ground container, naturally converting human remains to soil."

Starting with 3 cubic yards of plant material, the end product is 1 cubic yard of soil. It takes about a month and a half for that to happen, then a few more weeks for the soil to cure, according to Recompose, the Seattle company that launched the concept into popularity.

The regulatory process in New York continues until the details of the law are made practical — what natural organic reduction facilities can look like, how bodies are handled, where compost can go. The Division of Cemeteries, under the New York Department of State, oversees that formalization. The Cemetery Board — designees of the secretary of state, the attorney general and the commissioner of health — will eventually have to approve the regulations.

During the Cemetery Board's monthly meeting on Tuesday, Division of Cemeteries Director Lewis A. Polishook told the board that officials recently visited human composting facilities in Washington. Colorado has the only other facility in the country, he said.

"It already significantly informed our beginnings of trying to come up with regulations to implement natural organic reduction," he told the board.

Those regulations could come as soon as June, followed by a public comment period, according to David F. Fleming Jr., the legislative director for the New York State Association of Cemeteries.

"There are already cemeteries that are operating under the assumption that that's the time period and are looking at the possibility of opening facilities through the application process," in 2024, Mr. Fleming said.

On Thursday, as the legislature extended the budget deadline for the fourth time until next week, Mr. Fleming said that a proposal in Gov. Hochul's plan could impact who will be able to offer natural organic reduction. The law gives nonprofit cemeteries the option to provide the service, as they already do with other dispositions like burial and cremation. But the executive budget proposes a change to allow for-profit funeral firms to provide the service too.

"Out-of-state, for-profit funeral firms have been pushing in New York to allow them to enter into this space," Mr. Fleming said, which the cemetery association representing nonprofits wholly opposes. The association, president Nathan J. Romagnola wrote in commentary published by the Albany Times Union in March, worries that the proposed change would weaken consumer protections.

Mr. Romagnola provided testimony to the legislature during a February public hearing after the executive budget proposal's release, arguing that the state's Anti-Combination statute protects against one entity controlling final disposition and pricing.

Others, like Suzanne M. Kelly who oversees a municipal cemetery with a natural burial ground in Dutchess County, are more open to natural organic reduction facilities being set up outside the conventional cemetery space.

At its best, Ms. Kelly said, the green movement of death rituals intentionally involves loved ones in the process, and having more options that champion such involvement isn't a bad thing. She contends that the Recompose model in Seattle does that by allowing loved ones to be connected from start to finish, even layering the alfalfa and wood chips, if they choose.

Funeral homes, nearly 90% of which are still privately owned by families or individuals, according to the National Funeral Directors Association, are deeply tied to the death and grief process.

Local directors still have questions about the environmental and public health law implications of using compost with human remains. There are already rules, for instance, about the coarseness and dispersal of cremains, said Darien B. Cain, funeral director at Watertown's Cleveland Funeral Home.

Ms. Cain, who is also a lecturer in SUNY Canton's mortuary science program, is heartened by the possibilities of death rituals.

She reminds her students that they are the funeral professionals of the future, and that with their innovation, new methods of disposition, like natural organic reduction, could become just as mainstream as burial and cremation.

Funeral directors are waiting for the regulatory process to play out for the still-emerging composting method, but ready, Ms. Cain said, to accommodate interest in alternative disposition.

"We have to adapt in order to stay viable," said Steven M. Cary, owner and manager of O'Leary Funeral Service in Canton. "It's very important to understand what each person wants."

North country funeral homes already provide options for biodegradable urns, and in some cases, woven caskets.

Weavers like Mary Lauren Fraser, based in Vermont, are a growing part of the green funeral movement.

Her willow creations are lined with unbleached cotton muslin with cotton-rope handles, and she usually limits shipping to within New England to cut down on transportation emissions.

Ms. Kelly, the municipal cemetery administrator for the town of Rhinebeck, about two hours by train from New York City, said natural, or green burials have become measurably more popular.

Set in a young hardwood forest on about 10 acres, the Rhinebeck Natural Burial Ground opened in 2014. The existing conventional cemetery was used as early as the 1830s, Ms. Kelly said, and a newer conventional area was added in the 1980s.

Compared to the characteristically gridded sections with stone monuments and mausoleums, Ms. Kelly said they're selling spaces in the natural burial ground "probably 5 to 1, maybe more."

According to the National Funeral Directors Association's 2022 consumer report, 60.5% of people surveyed from around the country last year said they were interested in "exploring green funeral options." That's up from 55.7% in the association's 2021 report.

It took more than five years for the town of Rhinebeck to approve the taxpayer-funded section for natural burial — the whole body direct to the Earth.

Critics of conventional burial say clunky caskets don't promote decomposition and that too much land is used, and critics of cremation say too much fuel is required and carbon dioxide emitted.

Even body transport in most places in the U.S. likely requires a fueled vehicle, and in the north country, winter deaths can present challenges for families hoping to inter in the ground right away.

"Nothing is going to be 100% 'green,'" Ms. Cain said.

The natural burial method has relatively low environmental impact, said Ms. Kelly, who in 2015 authored a history of green burial in the U.S., "Greening Death: Reclaiming Burial Practices and Restoring Our Tie to the Earth."

"It's not just the lack of all the 'stuff,'" like leaching embalming fluid, caskets, concrete burial vaults and heavy markers, she said. Natural burial is also about "the experience of being in this space, of remembering the body in a way that's very hands-on." Family members can choose to participate as much or as little in the burial itself, something most cemeteries restrict due to heavy caskets and equipment safety concerns.

Rhinebeck has ongoing forest restoration projects in the designated natural section, and people are welcome to use the space like a park. The community, Ms. Kelly said, has been overwhelmingly appreciative of the reflective space that they had a hand in creating.

"That's what people are looking for," she said. "They're looking for this lost connection."

Some natural burial grounds, like Greensprings Natural Cemetery Preserve in Newfield, south of Ithaca, operate with a larger conservation component. Greensprings is situated on 130 acres of grassy hills, adjoined by two forests totaling 8,000 acres. Plots blend in with the natural surroundings, and minimal land stewardship is designed to nurture plant and bird species.

Smaller natural burial areas and homestead plots exist all over the state, said Mr. Fleming, the cemetery association legislative director.

In Canton, the Rev. Stitt, pastor of St. Mary's Catholic Church, said a natural burial section is being considered for St. Henry's Cemetery in DeKalb. Nearly 20 years ago, St. Henry's parish merged with St. Mary's in Canton and later became an oratory before being sold to the town in 2014.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Ogdensburg oversees the cemetery, and a natural burial section would be subject to diocesan regulations. The hope, the Rev. Stitt said, is to offer a natural section where plots would be less dense and interment is done without vaults.

The diocese, the Rev. Stitt said, would discourage routes like natural organic reduction, cremation and alkaline hydrolysis, also called aquamation or flameless cremation, which essentially dissolves the body in a pressure chamber of water and potassium hydroxide.

In the Catholic faith, "the dignity of the body" at death matters, the Rev. Stitt said.

"People are trying," he said. "How do we care for both the body and the environment?" A natural burial ground, he said, is a balance he is hopeful about.

Traditional rituals of other major religions tend to take a natural approach. Jewish rituals typically involve a simple, wooden casket without embalming. Islam calls for the body to be buried directly in the Earth, while Hinduism and Buddhism favor cremation.

In Akwesasne Mohawk tradition, a death begins a 10-day condolence period, involving longhouse ceremonies, songs and a fire kept aflame until the body is returned to the Earth.

"Our culture is kind of split between what people traditionally do and the modern, colonized way of burial," said Marla A. Jacobs, cultural manager for the Akwesasne Cultural Center on Route 37.

Many families maintain aspects of traditional longhouse ceremonies and feed each other in grief. In her family, she said, cremation has become a more common ritual.

"Everyone is different," she said, adding that reclaiming silenced traditions is ongoing. "I worked really hard at finding out who I was, and I think it's important that I have that in the end."

When Carrie Hill's father died in December, she started the grieving process with her family and Mohawk community.

"He was kind of a rugged, old-school man," Ms. Hill said of Curtis J. Mitchell Sr., who died Dec. 3. He held immense pride for his children, and, she said laughing, "he added coffee to his coffee."

Ms. Hill knew her father wanted to be cremated, but no one felt compelled to use a purchased urn. An award-winning basket weaver who stepped into her artistry 16 years ago at the encouragement of her aunt, Ms. Hill had an idea.

"What if we put dad in a coffee can, and we weave around the coffee can?" she recalled saying to her four brothers.

With Ms. Hill's guidance, her brothers — some never having tried to weave before — added their own touches to the basket that encased a blue Maxwell House can. It features gold leaf, multicolored splints of black ash, curled strands that remind them of waves and hand-gathered sweetgrass.

The urn creation, she said, inspired reconnections among her siblings, even if brief.

That's what the green movement is all about, Ms. Kelly and Ms. Cain said, especially after three years of the COVID-19 pandemic contributing to already distant rituals.

Ms. Cain hopes industry conversations about natural organic reduction and the green funeral movement spur more people to think about what they want. It's a lot easier to talk about death before you're forced to.

"We're all going to experience death," Ms. Cain said. For the sake of those passing and of those who remain, "having some sort of ritual or way that you want to experience and navigate it can be very powerful."