Written by: Antonia Gelorme
Where does the law intersect with the death industry and environmental consciousness?
The “death industry” encompasses those businesses that are dedicated to memorializing loved ones who have passed on. In 2020, the industry, along with almost every aspect of society, was rocked by the pandemic. The national cremation rate had grown steadily by 1% to 2% per year for the past few decades, and 2020 was no exception with a 1.5% increase nationwide.[1] Some regions even saw an increase in the cremation rate by more than 3% in the first six months of 2020, which some experts attribute to the early spread of the disease.[2]
These increases in cremation rates, both the steady yearly climbs and the regional pandemic spikes, carry an alarming increase in carbon emissions. A single cremation emits an estimated one hundred and ninety kilograms of carbon dioxide into the air, which is the equivalent of driving four hundred and seventy miles in a car.[3] Cremation is the predominant option for memorials, but burial remains a close second.[4] However, burials, especially those that involve embalming, vaults, and caskets, additionally have an adverse impact on the environment. Rather than polluting the air, burials put materials into the ground that are meant to interrupt any natural processes of decomposition, such as sixteen million liters of embalming fluid and about forty-seven thousand cubic meters of preserved wood coffins every year.[5]
Cremation and burials made up about 93% of all memorials in 2017 and represent the majority of the death industry in the United States.[6] The proliferation of the environmentally harmful practices associated with these methods may derive from a misunderstanding of the legalities surrounding handling human remains. For instance, a pouring cement vault or embalming a body before burial are not legally required in order to bury a body.[7]
Generally, states do not legally require a funeral professional to be involved in the planning and execution of a funeral.[8] Some states require a funeral director to be involved in some capacity, but typically only for administrative tasks like completing paperwork or transporting the body.[9] In all fifty states, it is legal to keep and care for the body at home until the funeral, and in most states the body may be buried on personal property.[10] Thus, the law doesn’t necessarily require the harmful practices implemented in the death industry, and it is often within the rights of the family or the funeral home to dictate what methods and materials are use.
Though the specific practices are not mandated by law, cremation and burial remain the only two memorial options available in all fifty states.[11] However, alternatives like “green burials,” which promote the decomposition of a body through the use of biodegradable materials, are growing in popularity throughout the United States.[12] Further, there have been active movements in state legislatures to approve of new technologies that curb the environmental impact of memorials and funerals.
In 2011, the process of alkaline hydrolysis was first used in the United States.[13] Alkaline hydrolysis or “aquamation,” is a process that uses water, alkaline chemicals, and heat to accelerate natural decomposition without the significant carbon emissions associated with traditional cremation.[14] A total of fourteen states have legalized the process in the decade since its introduction.[15] As recently as 2019, another “green” method for memorializing was legalized in the United States: human composting.[16] In this process, a body is placed in a vessel with amongst biodegradable materials that foster its transformation into soil.[17] Four additional states have legalized the method, with California the most recent addition in November of 2022.[18] Both “green” methods use specialty manufactured equipment, and are relatively new as commercial funeral options, but they do represent an environmental consciousness on both a consumer and a legislative level.
With a backdrop of the localized pandemic spikes in death rates cremation rates, as well as natural disasters like wildfires and extreme drought, the California legislature recognized that “climate change is real” and harmful emissions must be reduced in every aspect of life, even in death.[19]
[1] Kat Eschner, How COVID has transformed the death care industry for ‘last responders’, Fortune (Aug. 7, 2021, 3:00 PM), https://fortune.com/2021/08/07/covid-funerals-death-care-industry-burial-cremation-pandemic/.
[2] Id.
[3] Tien Nguyen, Cremation, burial, or composting? Calculating the environmental costs of the afterlife, Chemical & Engineering News (Oct. 15, 2019), https://cen.acs.org/environment/Video-Cremation-burial-composting-Calculating/97/i41#:~:text=Burials%20put%20a%20lot%20of,470%20mi%20in%20a%20car.
[4] Id.
[5] Id.
[6] See id.
[7] Elena Michele Slominski, The Life and Death of Funeral Practices: Persistence and Change in the Death System and the Rise of Eco-funerals in the United States 76 (June 2020) (Master’s thesis, University of Oslo) (http://urn.nb.no/URN:NBN:no-82364).
[8] Id. at 79.
[9] Id.
[10] Id. at 80.
[11] See Faith Karimi & Amir Vera, Washington becomes the first state to legalize composting of humans, Cnn (May 22, 2019, 5:09 PM), https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/22/us/washington-human-composting-legal-trnd.
[12] Slominski, supra note 7, at 96; see also Statistics, National Funeral Directors Association (April 15, 2022), https://nfda.org/news/statistics (identifying 60.5% of those surveyed were interested in “green” funeral options).
[13] Alkaline Hydrolisis, Cremation Association of North America https://www.cremationassociation.org/page/alkalinehydrolysis (last visited Nov. 30, 2022).
[14] Id.
[15] Id.
[16] Karimi & Amir, supra note 11.
[17] Kristen Rogers, How human composting could reduce death’s carbon footprint, Cnn (Nov. 7, 2022, 7:55 AM), https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/07/world/human-composting-natural-organic-reduction-scn-lbg/index.html.
[18] Id.
[19] Id.