(See also the video Green Burial at Forecast Earth)
Green burial is the oldest, most natural, and least ecologically disruptive form of burial. The late Rev. Rufus Morgan, who had a distinguished career as an Episcopal minister and naturalist in western North Carolina, was interviewed in the early 1970s for the Foxfire series. Reverend Morgan was then in his eighties. At one point he spoke briefly about how burial customs have changed over the years.
I really wish that the same burial customs prevailed now as then. . . . . There wasn't any idea of a metal casket or a means of preserving the remains because, as the scripture says, 'Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.' And I'd much rather think of my body as just going back to the earth where it came from and fertilizing some tree or the grass or flowers, than just having a metal box with me inside preserved like a mummy. [1]
