Source: Edmonton Journal
Author: L. HARRISON KELLY, POSTMEDIA CONTENT WORKS

Almost every cemetery in Edmonton has grass. But only one of them is green.

That would be Rosehill Cemetery, in the city’s southwest, which plans to open the first ‘green burial’ section in Edmonton later this summer.

The idea behind a green burial is simple: minimize the environmental impact of your death. Actually achieving this simple goal can be complicated.

“It’s not an easy thing to do in our industry,” says Marc Turgeon, who leads the management team at Rosehill. “A lot of the ways we care for our dead are not particularly environmentally friendly.”
In fact, conventional after-life care casts a surprisingly long environmental shadow.

Caskets are entombed in concrete, which can take decades to break down and which has a massive carbon footprint. Cemetery monuments are constructed of granite and marble to withstand the test of time

Then there’s what happens to the body itself.

“I’m an embalmer by trade,” says Turgeon. “When you embalm a body, the excess formaldehyde goes straight into the sewer system.”

Unfortunately, cremation also has a considerable environmental impact. The average cremation burns enough natural gas to emit 244 kilograms of carbon dioxide.

“A lot of people think, ‘cremation doesn’t use land so it’s environmentally friendly,” says Turgeon. “But there’s a big carbon footprint.”

The green burials at Rosehill offer another option. There’s no embalming, and caskets will be either biodegradable or non-existent, so bodies break down at their natural rate.

This will be hastened by shallower graves—four feet deep instead of six. Decomposition needs oxygen, and the deeper you dig, the less there is.

Rosehill’s “green section” will differ from conventional plots in other ways, too.

“There’s no monument or regular headstone,” says Turgeon. “The graves are basically unmarked. We’ll have a large communal boulder with the names and dates engraved, but individual graves won’t have a physical marker.”

The idea, he says, is for the green burial sections of Rosehill to revert back to a natural state once the remains are interred. That means no individual markers, though the cemetery will have GPS coordinates for each interment in case loved ones are particular about geographic specificity.

The goal of returning to a natural landscape over time necessitates another break with convention for green burials.

A traditional burial plot is usually purchased years in advance. This leads to the cemetery filling up in piecemeal fashion, as different customers check in at different times. If green burials followed this pattern, each fresh burial would require considerable disruption of the landscape.

“You don’t want to go back there and tear down mature native trees, disturb established native grass,” says Turgeon. “So instead, we give our ‘green’ customers the right to come to rest in a certain area. We assign the specific plot at the time of death.”

This lets Rosehill fill up a designated area with ‘green graves’ and then let nature work its magic.
While Rosehill is the first cemetery in Edmonton to offer green burials, the choice has been available—and popular—in Europe for over a decade, says Turgeon. Many cemeteries in Alberta have been moving towards it for years, says Turgeon. But the cemetery business, perhaps fittingly, does not like to hurry.

“We’ve had this in our master plan since 2013,” Turgeon says, “and we’re finally at the point where we can open.”

Rosehill’s green burial offerings are starting small. Just one of the cemetery’s 68 acres is being given over to green burials—for now.

But as nature reminds us, small things have a way of turning into big ones over time.

“It’s definitely not for everyone,” says Turgeon, “but I do think there is a segment of the population that will find this appealing. This is the greenest option available to Albertans right now.”

For more information, visit rosehillcemetery.ca/burial or call (780) 424-5493

This story was created by Content Works, Postmedia’s commercial content division, on behalf of Eparchy of Edmonton.