the Natural Burial Company - USA

About the Natural Burial Company

We Import, Market and Distribute Natural Burial Products - but above all, we network and educate...

The Natural Burial Company is a small independent business that relies primarily on a strong distributed network of producers, truckers, project managers, and funeral service provider resellers, all working together in Asia, North America, the UK and Europe.

We source, make, and distribute biodegradable burial coffins, urns and shrouds, suitable for natural earth burials and clean cremations.

The products we choose are made by responsible companies who want to supply environmentally friendly options in North America. We do this because we want to see natural burial become commonplace in the USA and we're confident that many of the people who buy natural coffins want that, too.

Wooden caskets are the most commonly thought of natural burial container, and we have several. However, we like woven fiber right now because it's lightweight and easy to handle, it's naturally durable but doesn't take a lot of packaging, it biodegrades more rapidly than wood, forests aren't cut down when woven fiber is used, and it keeps the weaving and paper handicraft arts alive.

We love finding new items that we think are great. We're really excited about some of our highlighted products this year - like the recycled paper Ecopod - or our Seagrass and Bamboo Coffins - or our handwoven willow - (read more about our natural burial products).

We're glad to offer our items to cooperatives, church groups, home funeral guides, and alternative funeral service providers as well as cemeteries, cremetories and licensed funeral directors. We will sell retail if we don't have a reseller in someone's area.  Contact us for more information if you have questions.

Changing Our Ways - making the (up)grade to Greener Funeral Pastures

(check out the online excerpt of the book, "Be a Tree, the Natural Burial Guide for Turning Yourself into a Forest" for more information on natural burial...)

The environmental impact of current funeral and cemetery practices is growing too clear to ignore. Everything we bury now that does not degrade thoroughly over time is there for the next generation to dig up and pay to restore tomorrow. The future costs of clean-up are rising everywhere. Savvy developers know that. So do citizens and cemetery owners. Green burial grounds are taking off in the UK and they''ll catch on in the USA - of that, we're sure.

Natural burial is not only beautiful (thanks to the forests and beautiful landscapes it creates) - it's practical, too. So is clean cremation, and - in our experience and contrary to popular belief - the USA is filled with practical people. Actually, most people around the world are practical, really, when you get right down to it - and when they're clear on the choices and the consequences of their actions, most people want to do the right thing. It's only a matter of time, and of providing sustainable options.

We can't bury plastic and stamped steel and chipboard and embalming fluid forever. The tide will turn, and natural burial will become one of the answers for a growing number of environmentally concerned people. As the paradigm shift around a natural end of life happens, a variety of opportunities will open up for both service and livelihood. The Natural Burial Company is working to help that happen.

What the Natural Burial Company wants:  Wise Alternatives

As soon as enough people say they want a "natural burial" or a "clean cremation," forward thinking funeral directors and cemeteries will begin to transition to better practices, and the NBC wants to see them get there. 

 New types of services - like celebrants and home funeral guides - are now coming into being. We want to see artisan casket makers, urn creators, weavers, shroudmakers, and a whole host of other crafters rise up to participate in an opportunity to turn a market around.

As funeral directors and cemeteries interpret the call to "green" in their own particular way, we're confident citizens will find the spot that's just right for them.

THE NATURAL STEP

 We're comfortable with the Natural Step Framework as a guide for businesses that want to improve their practices producing and consuming goods. Its four principles create a useful overall guideline grounded in science that any business or individual can use to evaluate its potential sustainability in the larger scheme of things.

Our products are made to a variety of standards and guidelines that are influenced by a number of factors. We're not advocates of certification in the natural burial movement since there are too many different ways to offer natural options, and it would be a mistake to pick one narrow path and force everyone else to pay and adapt to it.

For a first step to understanding what natural products buyers expect in the realm of green burial, check out some of the suppliers in Co-Op America's Green Pages. Some things to keep in mind are:

• Materials sources - renewable, re-purposed, recycled, recyclable
• Biodegradable - your product components should be both non-synthetic and biodegradable
• Labor - you should meet or exceed fair labor standards
• Production - minimize pollution and resource extraction
• Technique - artisan-scale that preserves the hand arts

Local Agenda 21, several decades old now, still offers concrete steps that cities and governments can take to green their projects, and hundreds of groups and organizations around the world are currently suggesting ways that we can make improvements.

In general, we seek out well-run businesses and artisans who consistently produce quality products and services without harming the environment. We encourage family wage jobs and we're proud of our Fair Trade Certified supplier with IFAT status from China. All of our suppliers visit the factories and workshops where they get the products.

 Contact the Natural Burial Company by e-mail

How We Work to "Get it Green" - encouraging the "natural" step

There's a lot to be learned in the "field" of natural burial, and a huge amount of it is just common sense (and paying attention to those who've done this for awhile now...)

Thankfully, the UK's woodland burial movement has been going strong for almost 15 years, and the woven coffins offered by the Natural Burial Company are tried and tested, buried in the UK's more than 200 woodland burial sites, and now offered for sale by many funeral directors there.

We think one of the most important things is to learn from our peers in Europe, the UK, and elsewhere. For a start, read the condensation of our forthcoming publication, "Be a Tree, the Natural Burial Guide for Turning Yourself into a Forest" at http://www.beatree.com.

We also recommend spending some time exploring the stories in the stories in the Alternative Funeral Monitor and exploring a number of our sponsors and colleagues listed there, as well as reading any of the selections in our recommended book list in the sidebar.

Our beautiful handmade coffins are durable and attractive, and help both the deceased and the bereaved to create a natural return at the end of life that respects the earth and restores dignity for all those who love life and nature and want to make one last statement about that love before they "go."

NATURAL BURIAL COMPANY RESELLERS - HELPING US ALL HAVE A NATURAL END

We have a growing number of resellers around the US and Canada, and many of them are helping their clients identify more natural options in their area. If you want a natural funeral, you'll have to plan ahead, and if you want to work with a funeral director, we highly recommend the ones who buy our coffins (of course!).

They help their communities just like your natural food store helps your local organic farmers. Visit our featured reseller's and our "Where to Go" pages to locate one, and if YOU know of a funeral director who should be on our list, please put them in touch with us. We're all in this together...

IF YOU'RE A PRODUCER OR SUPPLIER:

We look for some special things when we source products. Mainly, we want items that are produced at lower scales of technology than what's currently in use in the conventional funeral business, from renewable or recycled resources, and naturally biodegradable.

Since over 80% of the caskets sold in the USA right now are some variant of stamped steel (utilizing tooling and machinery technology from the  auto industry,  now shifting to Mexico and China), we know that means that most of our products, handmade from willow, bamboo, paper, wood, or another fiber, qualify for "greener" right off the bat!

If we sell your product, we'll want to know where it's made, who makes it, what it's made of, how many hands it passes through before it gets to us, how far it travels, and other things like that. If it's destined for burial, it should decompose more rapidly than a conventional burial casket.

If it will go in a crematorium, it should be of all natural materials (staples and nails are ok - they can be recovered with a magnet later). We don't require certified Fair Trade status yet, but someday we might. We'll probably visit your workshop at some point and inspect your goods - our customers want to know that WE know you!

Primarily, we emphasize functional burial products that are made from recycled or renewable materials, biodegrade quickly, have lower energy inputs in production, minimal or zero toxins, diversify materials, preserve artisan skills, have an excellence of design, solve a problem creatively, and are at appropriate scale, etc. For more information, suppliers should learn about the Natural Step Principles and seek to bring their operations into alignment with those over time. Incremental improvements will go a long way toward both improving the environment and creating a level competitive field.