This puts a new twist on the lyric "I'd like to be under the sea in an octopus' garden in the shade."
From Newsbusters.com: A Lasting Last Carbon Footprint by Erin Browne (comments in blue)
It was 69-year-old Carole Dunham’s last request: she would like to “be a home for fish.” That’s right; she wanted her remains to construct an artificial, underwater reef.
Valerie Streit, of CNN, wrote an article highlighting the Green Burial Council, a nonprofit organization that accommodates the last wishes of those who desire to minimize their final carbon footprint. Streit quotes only the eco-friendly death-care providers, ignoring any who might be oppose this particular type of “burial.”
Streit writes that while dying may be very natural, modern burying rituals such as “formaldehyde-based solutions” and “concrete vaults” are not at all “nature-friendly.” The Green Burial Council's executive director Joe Sehee supported the basis for Streit’s point by saying that “We can rebuild the Golden Gate Bridge with that amount of metal,” he said referring to Streit’s figure that the U.S. buries 1.6 million tons of reinforced concrete, and 90,000 tons of steal each year. “The amount of concrete is enough to build a two-lane highway from New York to Detroit,” he said. (concrete and steel are by and large constructed from elements occurring naturally in the environment, right? So putting them back in the ground from whence they came is bad for the environment how exactly?)
But there’s more to burial than just the body. The story ignored what eco-burial means for Americans with religious belief. Traditionally, Catholics have strictly practiced burials and not cremation of the deceased body because cremation can be viewed as a dismissal of the belief in the resurrection of the body and was commonly practiced in pagan cultures. Streit failed to include any religious figure’s opinion in the piece. (actually, the Church doesn't discourage cremation; she teaches that the ashes must be treated with dignity and stored, not scattered into the sea or to the four winds.)
Eternal Reefs, a company approved by the Green Burial Council, provided the memorial reef for Carole Dunham’s final request. “We're the surf and turf of natural burial,” CEO of Eternal Reefs George Frankel said in the article. According to the web site, “Eternal Reefs offers a new memorial choice that replaces cremation urns and ash scattering with a permanent environmental living legacy.”
Streit also highlighted a slightly creepier “green” phenomenon: coffin couches. “While it might be a bit macabre for some, CoffinCouches.com sells eclectic couches made out of used coffins,” Streit writes.
Okay, who else thinks this is creepy and weird? What if surviving family members want to pay respects at the burial site? Would they have to take a glass-bottom boat cruise to the reef? "Look Bobby! See that pink coral growing out of that skull's eye socket? That's Grandma! Hi Grandma!"
Come Judgment Day, we could very well see resurrected bodies that look like this:
