The Green Burial

I thought January was kind of an odd time to run an ad for Halloween.

It must have been a Halloween ad after all. Why would someone rent a casket except to outfit a haunted house?

As it turned out, the advertisement was actually the header for an article about a growing business - casket rentals.

During the funeral service, the dearly departed lies in an inexpensive liner within the $4000 casket. When the service is over, rather than sad survivors following the hearse to the cemetery and watching a sizable chunk of change drop into a hole, the liner is lifted from the casket and whisked away to the burial site where the recently deceased is unceremoniously buried in the thin box.

No doubt this is driven by economic conditions, but marketing firms are working to expand the window of interest for casket rentals by touting the option as a way to support the recent Green initiatives.

Seems to me that the cremation option has a much more direct impact on greening.  When Uncle Joe passes on, mix his ashes into the vegetable garden and - presto, jumbo size tomatoes without the need for Miracle -Gro.