Holding a lid in your carbon footprint doesn’t cease together with your final breath. Your selection of funeral can have a major environmental influence. In a current report by the US-based Nationwide Funeral Administrators Affiliation, 60.5% of these surveyed expressed their curiosity in greener choices together with resomation (water cremation) human composting and pure burials. 

And whereas the UK’s funeral preferences are at the moment cut up 80:20 between cremations and burials, YouGov analysis finds that virtually a 3rd (29%) of individuals within the UK would select different committal strategies if obtainable. 

Sophia Campbell Shaw founding father of Woven Farewell Coffins is among the UK’s 10 willow coffin makers, and eager to take extra environmentally pleasant choices mainstream. “The funeral sector is among the most polluting sectors,” she tells Constructive Information from her base in Devon. “One cremation makes use of as a lot vitality as a 500-mile automotive journey and releases a staggering 400 kilos of carbon dioxide into the ambiance.” 

Conventional burials don’t fare significantly better: within the US alone, 800,000 gallons of formaldehyde is positioned within the floor annually within the type of embalming fluids. And plenty of coffins embody steel, plastics and caustic glue, she factors out.

From this spring, Campbell Shaw is upping her firm’s eco-credentials additional by providing households the choice of renting fairly than shopping for a casket. She factors out that in some cultures, embody within the US, rental is frequent. “An individual’s memorial is held in a rented casket and the physique’s transferred right into a cardboard coffin afterwards,” she says.  

To scale back the carbon footprint of her coffins, all of Campbell Shaw’s supplies are absolutely biodegradable. Her customary willow coffins are designed with supplies that may biodegrade and return to compost, however she now additionally gives a rental coffin. That is additionally product of biodegradable supplies however designed as a flatpack of panels that may be assembled, dismantled, saved by funeral administrators and re-assembled.

Willow is among the greatest as a result of it may be grown on land vulnerable to flooding, coppiced twice a yr and as soon as harvested it grows proper again

“Willow is among the greatest as a result of it may be grown on land vulnerable to flooding, coppiced twice a yr and as soon as harvested it grows proper again,” she says. “It additionally offers extra vitality than is used to supply and course of it – which means that its manufacturing is internet carbon detrimental.”   

Campbell Shaw acknowledges there are cultural and emotional boundaries to be overcome within the UK. “Though the Federation of Burial and Cremation Authorities actively endorses the thought of renting coffins, funeral administrators will be resistant as a result of they really feel their prospects received’t see it as respectful.”  

Nevertheless, as president of the Affiliation of Inexperienced Funeral Administrators, William Wainman describes renting a casket as “a really sensible concept. In any case, we enter this world with nothing, and go away it with nothing extra. Why ought to we have to personal the packaging materials used to hold us away?” 

Campbell Shaw has additionally thought of the storage problems with a rental casket. Her rental coffin has been made as a brand new flatpack design impressed by a buyer who wished a coffin to maintain in his household and retailer to be used all through the generations, as a christening robe could be. 

It’s constructed of willow panels so it may be simply assembled and disassembled, with a thick ply base and durable hemp rope handles. A cardboard coffin sits inside. The foot finish of the coffin is detachable, permitting the physique to be transferred with dignity after the memorial on to the cremation mattress or subsequent to the grave for burial.   

“After use the casket is sanitised and saved by the funeral administrators or returned to us so it could used once more, as much as 15 occasions. On the finish of its rental life, it’s disassembled and the coffin supplies are responsibly recycled,” she says.   

And that’s serving to to sort out one other funeral taboo, the associated fee, Campbell Shaw notes. The value for buying certainly one of her hand-woven willow caskets ranges from £650-£800. To hire certainly one of her coffins and a coffin cowl is £200, excluding supply prices. “I’m nonetheless stunned at how a lot it’s frowned upon to arrange a funeral plan.” In 2023, Solar Insurance coverage figures confirmed the price of dying went up by 5% to £9,658.

“Providing coffin leases is a method of displaying those that funerals don’t need to be sophisticated,” she says. “You possibly can honour the particular person you’ve misplaced in a easy manner.”  

Pictures: Woven Farewell Coffins