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‘Mum kept saying she wanted to go up in a firework': Why green burials are going mainstream
'I want to become a pearl when I die - or a reef,' said Madeleine Sutcliffe. Aged 80 and suffering from lung cancer, Sutcliffe was given six months to live in January.
Adam, Sutcliffe's son, is enthusiastic. 'I don't think a pearl is possible but if mum's ashes are made into an artificial reef, I'll be able to dive to it,' he said. 'Given how I feel when I dive - serene, calm and meditative - a reef is the perfect environment to remember mum.'
Until recently, wanting an environmental funeral was a radical concept. Now, it's increasingly mainstream: a recent report by the National Funeral Directors Association found over 60% of families said they would be interested in investigating green funeral options - up from 56% in 2021.
Even local councils are responding: the Association for Public Service Excellence recently found that over 61% of councils across the UK already provide natural or woodland burial grounds, or plan to do so in the near future - up from 44% in 2018.
There are now an almost bewildering number of options available for those who want their death celebrated in a sustainable way.
Some are still under development, such as decomposers that turn the body into fertile soil, fungi bodysuits that decompose the body, and egg-shaped pods in which corpses are curled and a tree planted on top.
Other methods are already available in other countries: resomation - a chemical process of alkaline hydrolysis, and human composting - which involves keeping a body in a controlled environment so that remains are broken down quicker than a burial.
Other complex options, such as aquamation - which yields the same results as cremation by using pressurised water, is growing in popularity, as are biodegradable urns and tree pod burials - placing a deceased person's ashes into a biodegradable pod, buried under a tree.
The world's first mushroom coffin - a 'living coffin' that helps to speed up the body's decomposition and enrich the surrounding earth - is as close as a funeral home in south London.
Traditional funerals are losing popularity for a range of reasons, among them, the growing awareness of the damage they do.
According to the Green Burial Council, traditional burials in the United States use an estimated 4.3 million gallons of embalming fluid, 20 million board feet of hardwood (including rainforest wood), 17,000 tons of copper and bronze, and 1.6 million tons of concrete each year - all of which use vast amounts of energy to source, manufacture, process and transport. Over time, these toxins leach into the surrounding soil.
Even when filtered, cremations are also damaging; their fumes emitting carbon dioxide and toxic, mercury-laden gasses.
Then there's the price: traditional funerals can cost upwards of £5,000. Green burials can cost as little as £700.
The fall in religiosity is also a factor: while fewer than half Britons now believe in god, belief among those aged over 80 - like Sutcliffe - has fallen from 82% in 1981 to 59% in 2021.
When people are freed to make their own funeral decisions, results are often exuberantly celebratory.
'My mum had cancer for five years and kept saying that she wanted to go up in a firework,' said Caroline Murphy, of her mother, Jeanne. 'I never even knew it was a thing but after she died, we discovered that it was.'
Jeanne's ashes were divided into five fireworks - four of which have already been exploded in places significant to the family.
Jeanne's 14 year old granddaughter, Gabriella, loved it. 'My grandmother always said she was going to watch over us and after seeing her explode in the night sky above us, I can believe that's true,' she said. 'Each time we let a firework off, it was really joyous and celebratory. It suited her character perfectly.'
But with choice, comes risk: adverts for two funeral providers were banned a few years ago after they misleadingly implied their MDF coffins were more eco-friendly than other options.
Then last year, the Green Burial Council had to review their own processes after removing certification from a company called Ovum Fungi.
'Their pods initially met our certification criteria but their messaging made additional claims that were not consistent with our mission,' said Christopher Doggett. Ovum Fungi have not responded to calls from the Guardian.
Rosie Inman-Cook from The Natural Death Centre is conflicted by the rise in natural burial grounds in the UK: 'There are now over 300 in the country but only 70 that we certify,' she said.
'There are real cowboys out there,' she warned. 'We get far too many calls from families whose loved ones have been buried in the wrong grave, or their coffins improperly placed in the ground, or a space in the family plot filled with the coffin of a stranger.'
The Law Commission is currently consulting on alternatives to established funerary methods. But in the absence of regulation, experts are concerned that families are being exploited.
'There is a lot of opportunity here for greenwashing by those, some perhaps with the best of intentions, who haven't done the right research,' said Oliver Towner, a member of the SAIF National Executive, the group supporting independent funeral directors.
Towner points to the woven coffins that many funeral directors market as being a sustainable alternative to a wooden coffin. 'A lot of them are made in China and shipped to the UK. Are they still a more sustainable product than other options? The data at the moment just doesn't exist.'
Towner also points out how important it is to take wider facts into account when judging what option is most sustainable. 'The carbon footprint of a cremation will obviously be more than a natural burial, but you're more likely to live closer to a crematorium than a natural burial ground and you're likely to scatter the ashes closer to home,' he said.
Towner warns, however, that any interrogation of environmental claims has to cast its net even more widely. 'When looking at aquamation, for example, we need to factor in the the Environmental Agency's recent warning that London could run out of water in the next 25 years,' he said. 'If we start to rely on water cremation, what happens if London runs out of water in London?'
