Environmental Leadership Program Webinar: Greening the Grave

Simple. Affordable. Respectful of the human spirit. Green burial is a new yet traditional approach to burial, an approach with people at its heart and nature in its soul. At its simplest, natural burial means no embalming fluid. Simple, biodegradable caskets or shrouds. For markers, natural engraved stones or native plants. And for the 34 natural, conservation, or hybrid cemeteries and 250 funeral homes certified by the Green Burial Council, adherence to a strict code of ethics.But green burial is also about saving and restoring the land. Indeed, the green burial movement has the potential to protect millions of acres, beautiful places, all across North America.Mary Woodsen’s webinar introduces the whats, whys, and hows of the green burial movement and explores how natural burial is changing the conversation about peoples’ values and what they want their lives to mean beyond the grave — for their loved ones and for their world.

Mary Woodsen was the founding president of Greensprings Natural Cemetery Preserve in Finger Lake region of upstate New York, which serves as the lens for her story. Like other conservation and natural burial grounds belonging to the Green Burial Council of North America, Greensprings provides choices in death that reflects our lives.

Now Mary is research director and a public speaker for the Green Burial Council of North America and a 2012 Senior Fellow.