Going Vault-Free - Request "no liner" in your Cemetery Plot

The Natural Burial Company sells biodegradable caskets and urns suitable for liner or vault-free earth burial because they decompose over time.

However, many cemeteries require vaults - extra boxes made of cement or steel that your casket is stored underground in, to prevent or forestall decomposition - forever, or as long as somebody pays your rent.

VAULTS ARE NOT REQUIRED BY HEALTH OR SAFETY LAWS

These rules are generally private cemetery policy. If you're ready to really "go green", you'll likely need to do a little footwork and research to find a cemetery that will work with you and provide you with a vault-free burial. Think of it as one more activist adventure, and something you can work on til you die!

GO VAULT-FREE - find a cemetery that permits a "no-vault burial" or wants to convert to sustainable cemetery landscape management

Most cemeteries that require vaults use them because they practice old-style landscape maintenance techniques, still dependent on heavy lawnmowers and equipment to mow and apply chemical compounds. Those machines compact the ground over time, and are sometimes so heavy they crush coffins not encased in vaults. Natural graves do settle over time, and require more hand management.

THE GOAL IS TO FULLY RETURN TO THE EARTH

Vaults and liners do not work for natural burial. The goal in natural burial is to fully return to earth, not remain separated from it.  In sustainably managed cemeteries, heavy mowing equipment does not pass regularly over the grave. The biodegradable coffin collapses naturally with rain and time. The natural graves sink slightly and are then filled by hand a couple of times until the soil no longer collapses.

Natural landscapes do not need constant trimming, weeding, mowing, and de-mossing in perpetuity. Because there is comparatively little money spent on natural landscape maintenance, graves can be inexpensive AND habitat enhanced at the same time.

And in the most progressive cemeteries that offer natural burial, bodies return completely to the earth and the grave spaces are then reused in a specified number of years, satisfying both the need to return to the earth naturally and keep the land free for future generations.

Find a Local Cemetery and ask if they permit burials without a vault or liner

A lot of cemeteries - especially the old pioneer cemeteries, and those run by non-profit organizations like the Elks, the Oddfellows, the Masons, or small churches - still permit liner-free burial; that's "how it was done in the old days" and a number of them still feel they can do it today, especially when they learn that people might actually WANT them again.

Municipal cemeteries tend to be responsive to their communities, and a number of cities across the US have announced that they'll start offering natural options along with the conventional ones.

Some cemeteries convert to natural burial gradually, with wildflower areas left to grow  unmowed and the elimination of vaults becoming their first steps to a low-maintenance, habitat enhancing "Living Cemetery." And, as the picture below shows, it's ok to lighten up with the lawnmower (see the back area with its wildflower covered gravestones?) - nature can take it...

Remember - "NATURAL BURIAL" begins with a biodegradable container and just gets greener from there.