Natural End, Inc. works to promote the benefits of environmentally responsible funeral goods, services and sustainable cemetery management to the public and the professionals that serve them.
Natural End, Inc. works to promote the benefits of environmentally responsible funeral goods, services and sustainable cemetery management to the public and the professionals that serve them.
This is the current version of a presentation offered to environmental health staff and regulators on the issues surrounding natural burial. It may change, so consider it a work-in-progress. Its material will be incorporated into the Living Cemetery Handbook.
A GRAVE CONCERN (powerpoint)
Download A.grave.concern.2011.final.slides
A PDF of the bibliography may be downloaded here:
Projects
For 2011-2012, Natural End is engaged in three key programs, the Living Cemetery, the Final Expense Fund and the Natural End Map. The first two are still in the pilot-project stages, and promise to fill a need that's present both locally and across the country. The Natural End Map is slowly working out its structure, becoming a tool for people to locate service providers that contract to offer basic natural services VIA a signed pledge developed by the Natural End organization.
1. Living Cemetery
The Living Cemetery project's task is to produce a management handbook that can be used by non-profit and institutional cemeteries to introduce natural burial techniques into cemeteries active or closed, urban or rural, that want to offer natural burial to their communities.
Modeled after the UK's Living Churchyard Project, the Living Cemetery Handbook acts as a as a policy-and-procedures manual template for new techniques and policies. It includes basic guidelines for reducing resource and energy use, minimizing point-source pollution, and building greenspace, healthy soil and habitat, while maintaining the core use of the land and its facilities as a cemetery, with the needs of a community's bereaved supported at all times.
When finished, cemeteries can download the Handbook and customize it for their own use. Ongoing members of the Living Cemetery Program can participate in trainings, co-marketing, new technolgies, business development, and information sharing as they move their operations - and their communities - toward true sustainability. DUE - June, 2011.
Pilot Project - Oddfellows Cemetery in Corvallis, recipient of the first Living Cemetery Handbook template, Spring 2011
Host Program - Oregon State University, Soils - decomposition studies; turf, pollinators, and soil web health, Ongoing
Contributors - Mt. Hood Community College Mortuary Science Program
2. Final Expense Fund
Unlike emergency food, medical, or heating expenses, there are very few places people in need can turn to for help with funeral costs. Due to their artificially low price, cremations are most commonly required by State government for indigents, forcing people to be burned whether or not their spiritual beliefs prohibit it.
The Final Expense Fund wants to make the decision of burial or cremation a revenue neutral one. The Fund has two primary objectives - 1) to identify and calculate the real cost of natural burial and clean cremation in the local area, and 2) to make up the finanical difference between the two choices through charitable donations so that any indigent person can receive their disposition of choice, cremation or natural burial, regardless of cost.
The Fund seeks service contributions from cemeteries, crematories and funeral homes, along with cash donations from individuals and corporate sponsors to offset the real costs of meeting the funeral service needs. Means-testing of needy individuals is done through a local charitable s
Through these two carefully chosen projects, Natural End hopes to address core needs related to environmentally friendly end-of-life services that are currently unmet in its community.
3) Natural End Map
The Natural End Map is a free online map of funeral service providers that have stated that they offer some form of natural funeral service. After being listed on the map, service providers are contacted and urged to sign the Natural End Pledge if they qualify.
The Pledge askes a provider to offer minimum basic natural services - for morturaries, requirements include funerals without embalming and viewing allowed; biodegradable coffins; assistance locating a vault-free burial site. Cemeteries pledge to offer a vault-free grave and begin to work on resource-use reduction techniques (water, fuel, fertilizer, pesticide) in their cemetery management programs. Volunteers help by contributing names to the Map and following-up with potential Pledge signers to increase pledged participation.
Natural End provides no verification of a funeral home's or cemetery's performance of Pledge requirements. Listing on the Map is free, but an extended listing is available for a small fee. These fees, and the marketing fees of the Map's sponsors, contribute to the its operational costs.
“Returning the body to Earth; restoringthe cemetery to life”
Who We Are
Natural End is an independent nonprofit organization that educates institutional and government leaders, policy makers, and funeral system stakeholders (consumers and producers) about the benefits of sustainable cemetery management, environmentally responsible funeral goods and services, and affordable funeral service delivery.
It is still in its earliest phases, comprised of people with a passion for a healthy planet nourishing their children's children's children -- and others who simply love trees. Its board is diverse: a natural coffin merchant and cemetery idealist; a medical examiner; a pollution activist; a restoration ecologist and landscaper; a financial planner; and an office administrator offer their time to help guide its strategy and details.
Advisors from natural funeral service, cemetery operations and design, soils research, funeral education, sustainable forestry, mycology, organic standards development, habitat creation, and urban planning also contribute their insights. Together, the group works to overcome the obstacles that - today - stand in the way of sustainable cemetery management or natural funeral service and prevent a more natural end.
We welcome your inquiries and support.
CONTACT BY MAIL OR PHONE:
Natural End, Inc.
PO Box 11723
Eugene, OR 97440
503-442-1430
