When I Go, I’m Going Green

More Americans are choosing burials in which everything is biodegradable.

Excerpt: It’s near a cluster of oaks, in a cemetery in Wellfleet, Mass., where some mossy Civil War-era headstones are so weathered that you can no longer decipher who lies beneath them. The town permits nonresidents to join the locals there, and it welcomes green burials.

Regular summer visitors like us often share the fantasy of acquiring real estate on the Cape. Admittedly, most probably envision a place to use while they’re still alive, a daydream that remains beyond my means.

Buying a cemetery plot where I can have a green burial, on the other hand, proved to be surprisingly affordable and will allow my body, once no longer in use, to decompose as quickly and as naturally as possible, with minimal environmental damage. Bonus: If my descendants ever care to visit, my grave will be in a beloved place, where my daughter has come nearly every summer of her life.

“Do you see a lot of interest in green burials?” I asked the friendly town cemetery commissioner who was showing me around.

“I don’t think we’ve had a traditional burial in two years,” he said. “It’s all green.”

Nobody can count how many Americans now choose green or natural burials, but Lee Webster, former president of the Green Burial Council, is tracking the growing number of cemeteries in the United States that allow them.