The Green Burial Guidebook: Everything You Need to Plan an Affordable, Environmentally Friendly Burial

Despite the widespread attention garnered by Jessica Mitford's 1963 exposé of the funeral industry, The American Way of Death , the American way of death still includes average funeral expenses of between $8,000 and $12,000. What's more, every year conventional burials in the U.S. bury 800,000 gallons of embalming fluid, containing carcinogenic formaldehyde; hundreds of thousands of tons of wood, steel, copper, and bronze caskets; and millions of tons of concrete vaults. There is a better way and Fournier, affectionately dubbed the "Green Reaper," walks readers through it, step-by-step. With green burial and home funeral basics to legal how and what's; choices in practices (at home, at sea, etc.); and even detours into examples of celebrity green burials; this is comprehensive and compassionate guidance. The idea of a "good death" has been much discussed. Fournier points the way to good post-deaths, ones that consider the environmental well-being of the planet and the economic well-being of loved ones.