DEL.ICIO.USNo vaults, embalming, headstones: Milton ‘green cemetery’ proposed
Landowner Jim Bell will present his plan in a community meeting
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Monday, August 18, 2008
Jim Bell of Milton envisions a way to keep his pasture green and enhance city efforts to buy and develop park land — only it involves a different approach to dealing with dead people.
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Bell wants to use 17 acres of his property as a green cemetery and is scheduled to have a community meeting at 10 a.m. Saturday at Fire Station 43, 750 Hickory Road.
Marcus Yam/myam@ajc.com
Jim Bell wants to preserve the 17-acre pasture of his old horse farm by making it into a green cemetery in Milton. People would be buried in shrouds or bio-degradable caskets, no embalming, nor concrete liners. Instead of headstones the alternative would be flat field stones and plots that are marked by gps.
Mayor Joe Lockwood said he’s heard nothing but good things about it from the community.
“I support it,” he said. “It’s a practical solution to the inevitable. It’s very natural, very green and with that use of the property, you have some beautiful land for wildlife, like a park, versus a traditional cemetery with fences and headstones.”
Green burials harken back to the days before embalming. The recently departed are stored in a special refrigerator, then placed in a shroud or a biodegradable coffin within 48 hours of death. After a ceremony, they are lowered into the grave and then covered with earth. The headstone may be a flat, engraved (or not) fieldstone recorded in the cemetery’s GPS.
There’s no formaldehyde, no concrete vaults, no caskets of brass or tropical wood, no stone monuments.
Driving by the property on Birmingham Road, it would look like a field surrounded by a hardwood forest.
“I thought it would be a pretty place for a cemetery,” Bell said. “It will look like it does now.”
And he will donate a portion of the sale of each burial to a Milton green space fund.
He said keeping the site looking natural would be easy. It would simply require having someone with a tractor mow the tract like one would do for a pasture.
Marty Byars of Byars Funeral Home in Cumming will help Bell operate the cemetery. Byars said green burials are not really much different from burials by orthodox Jews or Muslims, who also avoid embalming and other Western practices. Many funeral homes are used to handling burials according to Middle Eastern customs.
But Byars said he’s unsure how soon local funeral homes will embrace the new approach. Burials in America average $7,500, according to the National Funeral Directors Association. A green burial would cost up to $4,000.
“They have absolutely no incentive to offer it,” Byars said.
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Comments
By jennifer
Dec 27, 2008 10:43 AM | Link to this
everyone who thinks that cremation is "greener" please do some research on the unbelievable amount of chemicals and gases released into the air for just one cremated body. It is NOT greener.
By WZB
Aug 21, 2008 3:17 AM | Link to this
Do you have to have a body already deceased? I've got a need for a very small plot for a very "green" person
Please help me.
Mowerman
By wirelessg
Aug 19, 2008 3:33 PM | Link to this
One already exists in Conyers, on the Holy Spirit Monastery property: www.honeycreekwoodlands.com
By roswellian
Aug 19, 2008 12:49 PM | Link to this
I'm going with cremation too. I don't see the point in burial. When the Marsh case happened a few years ago, I read an article saying cremation is not very popular in the South, and supposedly it's due to religious influence.
By Last American
Aug 19, 2008 12:11 PM | Link to this
Maggie, who did you call about being cremated. $500.00 - I need the number. Thank you
By shelly
Aug 19, 2008 12:07 PM | Link to this
this is awesome ... i love it ... count me in .... reserve a spot for me!!!!! i've read about green cemeteries in other parts of the country. ashes to ashes and dust to dust. embalming does not 'kill' deadly viruses or have purpose other than to 'preserve' the dead for the living.
By Last American
Aug 19, 2008 12:03 PM | Link to this
I think $4000 is far to much money. Cremation is the way to go. This way your loved one can always be with you - no matter where you live. I called a funeral home and was told is cost around 1000.00 to be cremated. Extra for death certificates. Maggie who did you call - $500.00 sound a lot better to me. Also, a life insurance policy (if you have one) is for the living. Funerals put people in debt.
By Maggie
Aug 18, 2008 12:34 PM | Link to this
I will be cremated. For a cost of approximately $500, it's the "greenest" and most natural way to return to the earth. My family won't have to buy a plot from Jim Bell or pay $4,000 to a funeral director. I'd like to be remembered as not being wasteful.
Besides, how pretty will Bell's pasture be with a constant parade of funerals?
By Mom
Aug 18, 2008 12:20 PM | Link to this
Hey, Roger B...do you really think that animals are going to dig 6' down to get at bodies? I doubt it seriously, or it would be happening all the time. You would hear about animals digging up graves all over the world.
By heather
Aug 18, 2008 11:59 AM | Link to this
What odd timing; I was just at a funeral this past weekend, and I made sure to stress to both my parents and my husband that when I die, I only want a green burial. As for people so afraid of the health risk of returning to the earth naturally... what do you think happens to the body of the millions and millions of dead wild animals? We were designed to decompose and give something back to the earth at the end of our lives.
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