It is often said that death is a cycle whereupon the body, carbon and a person’s essence are returned to the earth. What this maxim forgets to include is 6 billion tons of concrete, 800,000 gallons of Formaldehyde, and enough wood in one year to build 4.6 million single family homes! In fact, you could drive almost 4,800 miles on the energy used to cremate one person! There is a lot of steel, wood, cement and fuel needed to accommodate the over 3.5 million deaths in North America each and every year. We were shocked to discover the Environmental Impact, and amount of resources and energy currently needed to support traditional funerals in North America. This is why we created the environmental impact of funerals infographic.

As our society has become more environmentally conscious, we have begun to make fundamental changes in our lives. We eat less meat, we buy biodegradable products, we invest in energy efficient household appliances and we change our unhealthy habits. Today, the option of green burials, biodegradable caskets, and donations to offset one’s carbon emissions are slowly gaining traction. Why should your green consciousness end when your life does? Find out with our environmental impact of funerals infographic.

Environmental Impact of Funerals Infographic

The Environmental Impact of Funerals Infographic by MyKeeper.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

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Green burials are one of the simplest ways of reducing one’s environmental impact post-mortem. Green burials are defined as a way of caring for the dead that minimizes the environmental impact while simultaneously protecting the health and welfare of workers and using proper land management techniques. Cemeteries can now be certified by The Green Burial Council.

Burial is no longer your only option; you can be cremated and turned into a tree, recycled at the bottom of the ocean into a living reef or even turned into a gem! If you do choose cremation, new technologies in the industry are slowly resulting in reducing the use of chemicals as well as the rising popularity of flameless cremations, known as a resomations.

In order to reduce our own footprint, Keeper and TalkDeath donated 10 cents for every Facebook “share” of our environmental impact of funerals infographic during the launch week of the infographic from Monday, March 24th to March 28th 2014 to The David Suzuki Foundation.