When someone is buried, several polluting elements are incorporated into nature along with the corpse. On the website Ecosofia.org we can read that in the United States, every year, 3.130 million liters of toxic fluids, 90.272 tons of iron, 2,700 tons of bronze and copper and 30 million tons of wood are buried, among others. More and more people choose cremation instead of burial, and one might think that it is a cleaner option: the powders of a corpse are completely inert and no residue is left on the ground. It is not easy to know the exact amounts of cremation in the Basque Country, because there are no official statistics. According to the Spanish Society of Funeral Homes, in 2006 a quarter of the deaths were incinerated in the Spanish State, and the percentage increases year by year. In the absence of a better one, we have collected this data from a funeral home in Gipuzkoa: 40% of the corpses that reach them today are cremated, 10% ten years ago.

Any incineration process produces pollution, and that of the bodies, even more tolerable than burial, if any, is no exception, much less considering that the legislation obliges us to incinerate with coffins, at least in our country. In this way, to the CO2 that is necessarily generated by combustion, it is necessary to add various polluting products contained in the boxes (carbon monoxide, mercury, lead...). According to the Swedish Environment Authority, a third of all mercury released into the atmosphere in Sweden comes from burial ovens.

The USA and Sweden, we have had to go somewhere to look for data, because in the Basque Country there is almost no debate on this issue. On the other hand, just browsing the net a little is enough to realize that in some countries they have been concerned for a long time about the impact that the management of corpses has on the environment. Different paths have been implemented, independent of the mainstream but with success. The closest example to us is Great Britain. They were also the pioneers: Ecological burials began in the mid-1990s, and by 2007 they had 214 sites equipped for this function. Subsequently, the United States gave a vital impetus to ecological burials. Ecosofia.org tells us that in the territory of Uncle Sam, such as Australia and New Zealand, “green” cemeteries have reached a high expansion. But what is an ecological burial?

Living Death Differently

Green burials are promoted in the U.S. by the Green Burial Council. In fact, this is what the words “green burial” mean: green burial. The goal of the initiative is not only to avoid the ecological impact, but there is a whole philosophy of understanding death. “It is clear that the destiny that nature gives to our bodies is to unite them with the Earth”, you can read on their website, “all the organisms that have ever lived have died and returned to the ground to be recycled”. In Ecosofia.org they explain this more broadly: “Green cemeteries are born as an ethical, ecological and sustainable alternative to the traditional practice of the burial industry. During normal burials, the cadaver is separated/protected from the ground by entering the coffin that lasts for a long time and/or is embalmed for further preservation. The cemeteries are far from the cities and are cold places designed to allow many bodies to enter.” Green cemeteries, on the other hand, are natural spaces whose promoters want to maintain them, making them part of the process of renewal of the living corpse.

The Green Burial Council says they want to be an alternative. “Many families choose to incinerate, believing that it does less harm to the environment than traditional burial. The Green Burial offers a different path.” The corpse penetrates directly into the ground and not between four concrete walls. It is not embalmed beforehand, so it does not carry any polluting chemicals –mainly formaldehyde is used for embalming–; the body can be enclosed in a biodegradable coffin or simply surrounded by a cloth. No foreign elements are used to indicate the location of the tomb. In some cases, a nearby stone is placed with the name of the deceased, in others a tree is planted. As the Green Burial Council emphasizes – after all they are also companies – this option is not only ecological, but also much cheaper.

In the Basque Country we don’t have much evidence of ecological burials at the moment. The law in some cases, and always the prevailing mentality in our country, does not pave the way. The regulations in force in the Southern Basque Country state that the fate of all the corpses must be buried or cremated in the authorized place; the same happens in the North, but in addition there all the bodies that are buried must be embalmed. The authorized place, i.e. the cemetery, is defined by the UAE regulations as follows: “A restricted area where corpses, remains of corpses and remains, or their dust, are prepared for burial without risk to public health.” It goes without saying that the idyllic forests of the Green Burial Council are left out of it.

Corpses are not pollution

The passion for the protection of public health guides the steps of public institutions, which not only makes graves concrete, but also makes it necessary to bury or incinerate the body in the coffin. “The risk that a corpse can generate has a lot to do with the cause of death,” says Javier Aldaz of the Navarre Institute of Public Health, “but having the body of the deceased exposed in the accident, for example, does not seem to me very pleasant. From a health point of view it seems reasonable to keep the corpse in a hermetic container.” Before saying this, however, Aldaz admits that the corpse that is in direct contact with the land does not have to contaminate it.We met in his office with

Francisco Etxeberria, a well-known professor of forensic medicine. “Corpses don’t cause any problems when it comes to chemical pollution,” he says. “The result of the decay of the corpse is in itself a residue very similar to compost; in this sense, it does not add to nature anything that it previously had. The problem can be the proliferation of bacteria, that is what needs to be controlled.” Since

Roman times, the law has been to bury the dead at a depth of at least one meter, says Etxeberria. This prevents an animal, attracted by the smell, from being able to take the corpse out. If this rule is followed, Etxeberria believes that the best thing to do with a corpse is to enter directly into the ground without any sophistication. “It’s always been done.” The professor insists, however, that today in the Basque Country this would not be possible, even if the law allowed it. There's not enough room for the family members who die to bury each other in the piece of dirt they want. That is why it considers the regulation mandatory.

Plastic, nylon, varnish, paint...

In any case, Etxeberria sees a lot of flaws in today’s system. The most serious is the use of plastic covers. “Every word in a hospital fits into one of these for hygienic reasons and comfort. The fact is that many times the corpse remains inside that bag at the time of burial, because although the law says it must be removed, no one removes it.” After a few years, when the remains of this corpse have to be moved, the problem arises: “The body has not been properly corrupted, and if this is a serious health problem, it is a huge reproductive focus for microbes. This happens all the time today.” The remains

that emerge from the tomb are almost always burned, along with the paintings, varnishes and nylons of the coffins, plastic covers and, in the case of the North, the substances used for embalming (very little embalming in the South Basque Country). This creates pollution, no matter what. However, both public health and funeral directors say that increasingly “clean” products are being used in both coffins and embalms. In the case of the latter, it is the same product, but in lower concentrations.

Biodegradable coffin is not elegant

Since there is no burial in the natural environment and we will not get rid of the coffin for the time being, the good choice of this coffin is the only one left to those who want to have a more ecological death in the Basque Country. We have already mentioned the biodegradable coffins that they use in the United States; well, they are here too, and the law allows them, they only have to meet the requirement of being hermetic. There are those that are not biodegradable, but have a certain “green” touch: those made of wood extracted from controlled tree cuts, without metal parts... and also those that are not made of wood. Those made of cardboard, bamboo or corn are currently available. Available, yes, but not too much.

The law makes no objection, but tradition on the one hand, and the strict laws of the market on the other. Somewhere in the hope that we will be accused of not paying proper homage to the deceased, we tend to choose the “best” coffin, or at least the best we can afford. This is the most expensive and usually the most harmful to the environment, because it is the one with the highest content of synthetic materials. No one forbids us, let’s say, to go to the tomb in a simple pine box made by the carpenter’s cousin, but who will make that choice? At least the funeral homes won't cheer you up, because they have to move their business forward. An example is: The Argentine Mauricio Kalinov, who lives in Spain, has designed biodegradable cardboard coffins that can be made of 100 with a single tree and cost 50 euros. They only have one mistake: the funeral homes don't want them.