Recently I read The Green Burial Guidebook: everything you need to plan an affordable, environmentally friendly burial by Elizabeth Fournier. It was a segment on WPR's Central Time that led me to this interesting book.
At a slender 150 pages, the book is a straightforward and easy read, complete with detailed notes and resources at the end. Fournier first introduces the reader to the concept of "what is a green funeral" and then in the second half provides a guide to a green burial. For those already familiar with the go green movement in the area of funerals, the first half of the book may be repeat information. However, in the second half of the book Fournier takes the reader well beyond having a burial minus the coffin and vault, into various "shades of green" as she calls the spectrum of options available to making their death affordable and earth friendly.
There is detailed information for those with families that can provide preparation of a body for burial on "family land" as well as smaller, more realistic (through distance and dysfunction, many families may not be able to go as green as those who literally wash a body after death) such as carpooling visitors to a service, to using seed cards as thank you notes, to the new form of cremation - alkaine hydrolysis.
All in all this is an excellent resource for those wishing to have their death be as simple, affordable and earth friendly as possible.
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