Innovation in Funeral Casket Design
Elegantly Designed and Environmentally Friendly
|
|
|
|
OnEarth News PageBy Graeme Samuel (Sydney Morning Herald August 22, 2007) Funerals are not exempt from consumer exploitation, so take care to shop around.
Preparing for the Final Curtain By Nick Galvin (Sydney Morning Herald- Tuesday 7th July 2007) An increasing number of people are seeking a more holistic and eco-friendly approach to the end of their lives.
Get Buried in a Box: It's The Green Thing to Do By Jennifer Thompson, April 18 2007, Associated Content Green burials can help reduce green-house gas emissions from cremations.
Canberra - Ban On Cardboard Coffins Lifted ABC News Online Monday, April 23, 2007 ACT Government now approves the use of cardboard caskets and coffins in cremations .
Hong Kong promotes green coffinsBBC Online. 22 November 2006 The Hong Kong government has come up with a plan to help the environment and cut crematorium congestion at the same time - the eco-coffin.
Cardboard CoffinsABC Radio National - In the National Interest 12 November 2006 OnEarth Australia's Managing Director (Ivor Hay) is interviewed by Tony Mares from the ABC's "National Interest".
South Australian Inquiry into Bushland Burials19th October 2006 The South Australian Government’s Environment, Resources and Development Committee have recently received final submissions for their inquiry into establishing Australia’s first true bushland burial.
Taking a green path to the grave October 9, 2006 Adelaide Advertiser - (Page 9) Article on OnEarth Australia
Australians and New Zealanders Greener Than Brits And Americans 7 June 2006 - Research by Roy Morgan International Single Source data indicates that Australians are greener when compared to citizens of New Zealand, the UK and the USA.
11 May, 2006 - Green funeral in North Somerset UK
Greens Push for Use of Cardboard Caskets and Coffins 5 April, 2006 Australia - Greens push ACT Government’s for use of cardboard caskets in cremations.
NSW Government Inquiry Recommends Greater Use of Cardboard Caskets 10 December 2005 - New South Wales Government Committee recommends use of cardboard coffins and caskets.
13 June 2006 - The people of Ghana (west Africa) have a way of making a funeral a time of unique celebration. *********************************************************************************** Sydney Morning Herald - August 22, 2007 Funerals are not exempt from consumer exploitation, so take care to shop around. The death of a family member can be a harrowing and difficult time. Unfortunately, it can also be a time when families are at their most vulnerable to being financially disadvantaged. The Federal Court this month issued $40,000 in penalties against a Melbourne funeral industry figure and his company for attempting to fix prices among celebrants. Civil celebrants conduct secular funeral services for a fee where families opt not to use the services of a priest or other religious figure. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission took action against Dally Messenger and his company, trading as the International College of Celebrancy, for attempting to arrange for members of the college to charge an increased fee fixed at $440 a service. That fee represented an increase on the generally prevailing charges and, based on the ACCC's inquiries, was up to double the average charged in areas outside Victoria. When a family contacts a funeral home, usually the business sends out a representative to discuss the family's needs. The representative will provide general information and a quote for the funeral which includes a range of costs such as the choice of coffin, flowers and, if chosen, the civil celebrant's fee and name. The celebrant's fee is often simply passed on to the family as a listed component of the overall quote from the funeral home. The celebrant will meet the family separately to prepare a eulogy. The arrangements proposed by Messenger (who is the grandson of the former rugby league great) envisaged not only an immediate price rise but provided for annual increases to fees which all members associated with the college would agree to charge. It is not the first time that prices in the funeral industry have been called into question. In 1991 the Prices Surveillance Authority conducted an investigation into the industry following complaints of high prices and large variations in quotes. Price fixing between competitors is illegal in many countries, including Australia, as it leads to higher prices for consumers by reducing competition. It is particularly insidious because consumers often have no way of knowing they are being overcharged. In the Victorian case, one of the most concerning aspects for the ACCC was the potential for families dealing with grief to be charged uncompetitive prices. When someone dies and families are grieving, they often do not want to, or are not in a position to, shop around and compare prices. Often they accept the first quotes provided to them. In such situations a competitive market can at least give them a better chance of paying a fair price, as opposed to a market where rivals have rigged prices among themselves. But there are steps families can take to ensure they are not overpaying. Prices for funeral services can vary widely and it may be worth at least considering a variety of options and providers before accepting a quote. Savings need to be weighed against the convenience of having someone organise everything on your behalf but a friend of the family may be able to help in this task to reduce stress. Obtaining quotes from more than one funeral home may also make a significant difference to the final bill. Some states have laws relating to pre-paid funerals that require families to be given written quotes of costs but largely the industry is self-regulating. That said, it is important to remember that families are covered by the federal, state and territory fair trading laws that protect them from being mislead when paying for any form of goods or services, including funerals. Graeme Samuel is chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. *********************************************************************************** Preparing for the Final CurtainBy Nick Galvin (Sydney Morning Herald- Tuesday 7th July 2007 http://www.smh.com.au/environment/) An increasing number of people are seeking a more holistic and eco-friendly approach to the end of their lives, writes Nick Galvin (Sydney Morning Herald- Tuesday 7th July 2007). It's 10 years since Margaret Ward's husband, Peter, died suddenly from a heart attack at their home in far northern NSW. Margaret remembers her partner of 31 years as a remarkable man - a professional sailor and jazz fan known for his sense of fun and generosity of spirit. With his passion for the natural world and the outdoor life, it was clear that a conventional funeral was never going to be suitable for Peter. "I knew Peter wouldn't want a church funeral," says Margaret. "About three years before he died, one of his aunts died … and he came home from the funeral and said, 'That's terrible. You line up in a crematorium and one family is coming out and the other is lining up to come in'. It really distressed him. I knew he didn't want to go into a crematorium." At the time of Peter's death, the couple was managing an organic herb business at Billen Cliffs community near Kyogle. With the help of Zenith Virago, a local celebrant, Margaret and her daughters arranged for Peter to be buried at Billen Cliffs in a simple timber coffin with a bush rock as a grave marker. "My friend has a nursery and he planted a huge poinciana tree beside the rock and a year later provided all this native flora for the grave," says Margaret. A jazz band played during the ceremony and friends and family were encouraged to include notes to Peter and other keepsakes in the coffin. "Looking back, it was just amazing," she adds. "People are still talking about this amazing celebration and I'm sure it's exactly what Peter would have loved." And while Peter's burial may seem to have been a little unorthodox, in fact it is representative of a style of eco-friendly burial that is becoming increasingly widely accepted, especially overseas. In Britain, for instance, woodland burial sites are becoming increasingly popular, with more than 200 now dotted around the country. As the name suggests, these sites generally have established trees with grave sites in between. Typically, the only markers allowed are small wooden plaques. In some cases markers are discouraged altogether, with relatives asked to rely instead on GPS co-ordinates to locate their loved one's final resting place. The trend is spreading only slowly to Australia. One of the country's first true bushland burial sites is being planned in Lismore on the NSW far North Coast. The land earmarked for the burial site is adjacent to the Lismore Memorial Gardens and consists of about four hectares of bushland dotted with gum trees that are also home to several koalas. Kristian Whitney, co-ordinator at the memorial gardens, says it would never have been possible to clear the trees to create a conventional cemetery. "We decided the better option was to set up a bushland cemetery where the infrastructure and costs are minimal," he says. "It would also better serve the different mind-sets of people on the Far North Coast." The only markers allowed for the grave sites will be small bush rocks. "We want to just let the ground be covered by the natural ground cover of the area," Whitney says. "The casual viewer will just see a nice grassy meadow with some tall gum trees sprinkled through it." Conventional coffins will also be banned from the facility, which should be in operation by the end of the year. "We're not going to allow the normal chipboard or MDF caskets," says Whitney. "It will have to be something very organic in its construction. There will be no plastic liners or handles." There are now a number of "green" coffins (or caskets, as the industry prefers to call them) available, but such are the taboos and rituals surrounding death that coffins made from eco-friendly materials such as bamboo, papier-mache or even cardboard are still comparatively rare. Ivor Hay set up in Adelaide about two years ago manufacturing cardboard coffins. Business is steady but not spectacular, he says. The coffins, which retail for between $300 and $400, are made from a particularly robust "honeycomb" cardboard. "It's a very solid and lightweight material," says Hay. But despite his product being certified for weight of up to 120 kilograms to allay nightmarish fears of coffins splitting or disintegrating at the graveside, Hay still meets resistance from the funeral industry, even in the face of relatives who are adamant they want a cardboard coffin. Typically, funeral directors cite health and safety concerns, but it is hard to imagine that, given the amount of money to be made from the sale of conventional coffins, there is not some self-interest at work as well. Hay says his customers are a mixed bunch. "Some of them you could call old hippies and alternative people," he says. "But others are old people who think the idea is just fantastic because they have been through the Depression or the war and think a funeral should be just basic." Virago, the celebrant who helped Margaret Ward plan her husband's funeral, is also a founder of the Natural Death Centre in Byron Bay. "Our aim is to inform, advise and assist people who wish to conduct a more personalised, unique and ecological funeral," she says. Virago estimates there are as many as 50 "eco burials" performed around the area each year. "There is a global movement to bury in the old-fashioned way," she says. "That way the body will dissolve back into the ground instead of becoming a waste product. You are becoming a positive because you are nourishing a tree and actually helping the planet. "Just like women reclaimed birth in the 1980s, people are now reclaiming death. You don't have to be a radical greenie. If someone says you can either be buried in a straight row under concrete or in a paddock under a tree it's a very easy choice." When considering the environmental effect of one's mortal remains, cremation - the most popular method of disposal in NSW - is a particularly problematical way to take that final journey. Some of the pollutants generated by the average cremation include nitrous oxide, sulfur oxide, dioxin and mercury. And, of course, carbon dioxide . The University of Melbourne's Professor Roger Short says the average male body produces about 50 kilograms of carbon dioxide when cremated. This does not take into account the greenhouse gases produced by the gas-powered cremation ovens themselves, which are heated to more than 800 degrees for 90 minutes for each body. Short began considering the idea of greener funerals 20 years ago while visiting the conservationist Kuki Gallman at her Kenyan home. "On her lawn there were these two fantastic trees," he says. "Kuki said the one on the left was her husband who had been killed in a terrible car crash. She had buried his remains in the lawn and planted a thorn tree over him because he loved thorn trees." A few years later Gallman's son was also killed and she buried him under the lawn as well and planted a thorn tree over the grave. "Every evening I sit having a sundowner and look at my husband and son," Gallman told Short. "Each day they grown bigger and more beautiful and I celebrate their life." This experience stayed with Short, who recently delivered a speech in Melbourne extolling the virtues of "becoming a tree" instead of cremation or conventional burial. He wants to be an oak tree in his native England. "The thought that you might be able to do some good for the planet several hundred years after you have died by promoting the growth of some trees makes you feel a little bit cheerful," he says. "Forget pushing up daisies, we should be pushing up forests instead."
Graham Bird is very sick from Parkinson's disease and knows that, at 71, he doesn't have a lot of his life left ahead of him. So now the passionate environmentalist and former farmer is preparing calmly for his own death. "In terms of being an ecologist, I think death is very much the same as life," he says. "It's just inherent in it. Actually, being frightened of death is really crazy."
And Bird is determined his own passing will have a minimal impact on the planet. If possible, he will have a woodland burial and a simple, low-impact ceremony.
Plenty
of good times to be had yet ... Graham Bird chats with celebrant Victoria
Spence. "It's a last little gesture," he says. "Although it's not nearly as important as reducing our human impacts while we are in the world. I also don't think I would want my body moved far from where I die - I think it's better to be buried close at hand." Sitting in his small flat in Katoomba, it's hard not to be impressed by the stoicism and dignity with which Bird discusses both his own future and his fears for the future of the planet. He recalls one crystallising moment when, as a young man, he went to work on the North Coast. "I saw how the soil had deteriorated enormously since settlement and how people were putting bananas in incredibly steep hills," he says. "There was one day where I looked way up at a hill and there was a bulldozer clearing land that was obviously for bananas and I thought, 'The gods must be crazy."' He went on to play a pivotal role in establishing social ecology teaching at the University of Western Sydney and campaign widely on green issues. But his disease is beginning to take its toll. "It tires you out and makes it hard to be [as] effective as you want to be - for instance, I can't really type on the computer these days." Recently Bird has been working with a celebrant, Victoria Spence, who helps people nearing the end of their lives and recently bereaved loved ones. "Imagine if I came in to a woman who was in labour and said to her, 'Right. Now you are in labour, let's do some birthing classes,"' she says. "You'd think I was an idiot - it's too late. In the same way, we can't leave the conversation and business of preparing for our life's end until we are experiencing it. It's too late. "The more we create a relationship with our own mortality the more we are aware of the incredible preciousness of our lives - and by extension the entire planet." Not that Bird is in any hurry to realise his own mortality. As he says: "There are plenty of good times to be had yet … I just think taking death too seriously is quite funny, really." Nick Galvin *********************************************************************************** Get Buried in a Box: It's The Green Thing to DoBy Jennifer Thompson Published April 18, 2007, Associated Content http://www.associatedcontent.com Professor Roger Short of Melbourne, Australia reports that the act of cremation furthers the effects of global warming, and possibly ought to be stopped. When a person dies and chooses cremation to deal with their remains, they go up into the atmosphere in the form of a carbon dioxide bubble. For example, the body of the average Australian man, when cremated, goes through this process: the body is heated to 850 degrees Celsius, which is 1,562 degrees Fahrenheit, and is heated at this temperature for ninety minutes. This translates to fifty kilograms, or 110 pounds, of carbon dioxide; that's not all. Factor in the cost of the emissions during the production and later the burning of the wooden casket, and the carbon cost of fuel, and you're looking at a lot more. Short suggests that instead, perhaps a person could opt for a more environmentally beneficial choice for the disposal of their remains, burial under a tree in a cardboard box. That would, Short says, feed the trees nutrients through the decomposing body, and the tree would then convert the carbon dioxide in the environment to oxygen. The tree could do this for years upon years. According the to U.S. EPA, over the last 200 years human activity has contributed to global warming, though natural activity of the Earth has caused such climate changes for centuries. People burn fossil fuels, like coal and oil; they cut down trees; all of these activities add to greenhouse gasses being trapped in the atmosphere, simply put, like greenhouse glass panels. Though greenhouse gasses are important to maintain the Earth's temperatures at those that make it warmer than it otherwise would be, since 1900, the Earth has become 1.2 to 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit warmer. The warmest temperatures on record have been within the last fifteen years, and scientists feel certain that our activities are attributing to it. Professor Roger Short is a reproductive biologist at the University of Melbourne. He says that though cremation is a probable contributor to global warming, it is a process that contributes very, very little to greenhouse gasses, and that he did not want to prevent people from their chosen method of disposing of their remains after death, especially if it conflicted with their religious beliefs and practices. To appease the environmentalists though, he does urge a person to consider his recommended mode of burial. "You can actually do, after your death, an enormous amount of good for the planet," he said. "The more forests you plant, the better."
*********************************************************************************** Canberra - Ban On Cardboard Coffins Lifted ABC News Online Monday, April 23, 2007 Canberrans now have the legal option of a green cremation, after the lifting of a ban on burning cardboard coffins. Cardboard coffins were always permitted for burials, but until today the ACT was the only state or territory outlawing their use for cremations.
Greens MLA Deb Foskey says her party has been lobbying for the change for years, and that in the past there have been 'obstructions'. "Not just the government, but also the only provider of cremations here has had objections to the process," she said. "I believe it's now up to that company, the Norwood Crematorium, to change its practices."
***********************************************************************************
*********************************************************************************** Cardboard CoffinsABC Radio National - In the National Interest, 12 Nov 2006 http://www.abc.net.au/rn/nationalinterest/stories/2006/1785450.htm
Where do rock legends go when they die? Perhaps into cardboard coffins. Ivor Hay was the drummer with the Saints, and now runs a company called 'On Earth' that manufactures and markets 100 per cent recycled cardboard caskets. So, even after you are dead, you can still do your bit for the planet. *********************************************************************************** South Australian Government Inquiry into Bushland Burials 19th October 2006 The South Australian Government’s Environment, Resources and Development Committee has received final submissions for their inquiry into establishing Australia’s first true bushland burial. Australia still does not have a real green cemetery. There are a couple of cemeteries with a “bushland” setting but they still support the traditional burial practices of wooden (particle board) coffins, headstones etc. The inquiry, headed by Bob Such will look into a suitable location for the cemetery where biodegradable coffins and caskets will be used and only native shrubs or trees will be placed over the location of the burial site. According to Bob Such – “The great thing about natural burial grounds is that they provide a positive contribution to the environment. They are easy to maintain. They are inexpensive to implement, because the person is buried in a cardboard or a wicker coffin, and a tree is planted above or alongside the cremated remains. There is a little plaque next to the tree or at the entrance of the natural burial ground, saying that a particular tree represents the place where a particular person was buried or their cremated remains have been placed.” South Australia was an innovator in funeral practices by being the first State in Australia to introduce cremation facilities in 1909. They will now be the first State to introduce natural burial grounds. This is innovation that is long over due. *********************************************************************************** Taking a green path to the graveAdelaide Advertiser - October 9, 2006 (Page 9)
"With the rising costs of funerals, customers are demanding low-cost and environmentally friendly options when planning a funeral," he said. "These caskets are attracting the interest of people throughout Australia who are looking for bush or green burial" EASY LIFT: Ivor Hay with one of his firm's caskets (Picture: Tait Schmaal) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Australians and New Zealanders Greener Than Brits And AmericansJune 07, 2006 Research by Roy Morgan International Single Source data indicates that Australians, when compared to citizens of New Zealand, the UK and the USA, are most likely to agree that “At heart I’m an environmentalist” and “If we don’t act now we’ll never control our environmental problems.”
The research shows that Australians aged 50-64 are the most likely (76%) of any age bracket to consider themselves an “environmentalist.” Awareness of rising greenhouse gas emissions and global warming has further emphasised to citizens of all four countries the current threats to the environment.
Source: http://www.roymorgan.com/news/press-releases/2006/508/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Australia - ACT, "Greens Push for Use of Cardboard Caskets and Coffins"April 5th, 2006 Deb Foskey, Greens MLA for Molonglo (ACT), today questioned the ACT Government’s commitment to low cost and less environmentally destructive funerals when it rejected a request to allow the use of cardboard caskets in cremations. “What a waste: expensive caskets and caskets, often veneered from our dwindling old growth forests, are going up in smoke, when cardboard caskets would do the job just as well.” “Tests have proved that the cardboard caskets are safe and strong enough to meet ACT specifications, but the Government closed the matter rather than allow the company to demonstrate this.” “Cardboard caskets are the new technology in caskets - and in growing demand by the funeral industry and families.” The women’s family was very disappointed when advised by the funeral director that permission had not been granted. They approached the Minister themselves and were even more disappointed to be dealt with rudely.” “I am asking the Minister responsible (Mr Hargreaves until further notice) to give this matter the attention it deserves, as many people in the ACT would like to explore this option for their funerals, and ought at least to have their interest taken seriously” Dr Foskey said. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
********************** Fun With Funeral Caskets13 June 2006 The people of Ghana (west Africa) have a way of making a funeral a time of unique celebration by creating fun shapes for their family and friends. Below are some examples of an airplane, coke and fish caskets used as funeral caskets.
| |||||||||||||
|
|
Adelaide
manufacturer, OnEarth Australia has launched an environmentally friendly,
low-cost cardboard funeral casket. Company managing director Ivor Hay said the
caskets had been approved by testing authority TestSafe Australia.
