Jim Bell sees more than grass growing when he looks through his dining room window at 17 acres of rolling pastureland in north Fulton County.
Milton Fields is the green cemetery Bell opened last summer. To be buried there, forget about formaldehyde-based embalming, caskets made of metal or exotic wood, concrete vaults or upright grave markers.
Bell thinks green burials are an extension of the natural life movement, the kind of thing pragmatic, eco-friendly shoppers will embrace as they plan for the end of their lives.
He’s betting more people will think like David White, 48, who bought a plot at Milton Fields for his future burial.
“I don’t like cremation and I don’t like embalming,” said White, the owner of a concrete pumping business in Canton. “It’s not the way it’s supposed to be. It’s dust to dust and you can’t turn to dust if you’re embalmed.”
Bell, 59, had a long career in property management before going into the cemetery business, which he learned from hired consultants. He has owned acres of land in Milton for 35 years and lives near the cemetery in a white wooden farmhouse more than a century old. Right next door is another cemetery, belonging to an old baptist church.
“It made sense as a way to preserve the property and help folks save money on burials,” he said. “It’s a very good way to preserve green space.”
Four funerals have been held at Milton Fields since the summer and 14 plots sold for future burials, Bell said.
He provides the burial plot only, conducting business with clients at the dining room table. Funeral homes coordinate the services and provide tents. Private companies dig the graves – unless family members want to dig the grave themselves.
Bell said he, like many others, was surprised to learn embalming and burial vaults are not required by law. The embalming of bodies is a relatively new way of dealing with death, he said, starting when bodies were shipped home from the Civil War. That means green burials are not a fad, but a return to the old way.
Only about 15 exclusively green cemeteries operate in the United States, said Joe Sehee, executive director of the Green Burial Council. Several dozen hybrid cemeteries with green options exist.
Milton Fields is Georgia’s second exclusively green cemetery. The first was Honey Creek Woodlands at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers. Honey Creek has had 56 burials since opening on Earth Day (April 22) 2008, said Jim Whittaker, burial ground manager at Honey Creek.
To start his cemetery, Bell faced more scrutiny than the monastery. Church and city cemeteries are essentially unregulated by the state, said Matt Carrothers of the Secretary of State’s office.
Bell had to obtain a special use permit from Milton and gain approval from the State Board of Cemeterians. He deposited $10,000 in the bank to start a perpetual care fund.
“By making it green space, it made it easier to get zoned,” he said. “In Milton, everybody likes the horse pasture look. The view is the same. No upright tombstones.”
In fact, cemetery regulations state: “Milton Fields is managed to have the look and feel of a Southern horse pasture.” Other rules: no embalmed bodies, vaults, benches, dogs running in the cemetery, synthetic fertilizers or release of balloons.
Green cemeteries haven’t been welcomed in other places in Georgia. In November 2008, the Macon-Bibb County Commissioners killed a green cemetery proposal by passing an ordinance requiring leak-proof caskets or vaults for burials.
Elizabeth Collins, who proposed the project, said she probably scared the public by saying pagans and hippies might use the cemetery. Also, people in east Bibb County where the cemetery was planned carried a grudge, she said, about having a landfill “rammed down their throats.”
“They wanted to kick somebody’s butt and there we were,” Collins said. She said she’ll sue the county.
Bell said about half his clients want to go green in death and the other half like the cost savings of a green funeral.
A green funeral usually costs about $4,000, Bell said. A single burial space at Milton Fields costs $1,000, a double space $1,800. Space for cremation urns costs $250 for a single space, $450 for a double space.
A conventional funeral, according to the AARP, costs $7,323.
Another business challenge for Bell is building Milton Fields’ reputation in a quiet way that befits the cemetery business. That means mostly word of mouth.
“I think you’ll find this decision is a very unique and personal decision,” he said. “That’s one reason we don’t spend a lot of time and money advertising.”
