Community: Funerals are our final chance to choose to make a sustainable choice. The most common caskets in NZ are MDF caskets with plastic handles, embalming fluids contain toxic formaldehyde, and burial at six feet under doesn't allow for a more natural oxygen-led process of decomposition. A natural burial, on the other hand, is completely sustainable and sends the body back to the flora, fauna and ecosystem.
Natural cemeteries first reappeared on the scene in the early 1990s, conceptualised by Ken West in Carlisle UK, who received an OBE for a lifetime's work in this area. The UK's natural Death Centre, the Native Woodland organisation, and the USA's Green Burial Council are all extending research and knowledge across the English-speaking world. According to a recent study by Durham University, the popularity of natural burials is growing three times faster in the United Kingdom than when crematoriums were first introduced 150 years ago, more than 260 natural burial sites now exist in Britain.
The New Zealand movement is guided by a number of parties, including the not-for-profit organisation Natural Burials (naturalburials.co.nz) , established by Mark Blackham in 1999, Lynda Hannah of Living Legacies (livinglegacies.co.nz), and Tamara Linnhoff of the Good Funeral Guide (goodfuneralguide.co.nz).
The first NZ eco-internment was at Auckland's Waikumete back in 1999. In 2007, in partnership with Natural Burials, Wellington City Council opened a dedicated natural burial area at its Makara Cemetery, which to date has over 85 burials. In six years the cemetery has grown from an initial eight burials in the first year, to around three to four burials a month, around 1% of Wellington's total burials. Natural burial sites are also open in Motueka, New Plymouth and the Kapiti Coast, a new space is due to open shortly at Auckland's Waikumete, with regional councils considering sites in Palmerston North, Canterbury, the Wairarapa and Waikato.
Blackham, who has had a strong love of the natural world since the age of 12 when he was involved in an environmental competition, lost a child at birth and found that he and his wife were unable to bury him naturally. "It seemed like it was such a natural thing to do." Determined to make natural burials a choice for New Zealanders, he discovered that his idea was supported by others around him and Natural Burials was founded.
