Living Green

On his 66th birthday last May, Harry E. Echols learned he had esophageal cancer.

The prognosis was grim enough that Echols decided against treatment that might only slow the inevitable. With the help of his sister, Janet Ferguson, the Atlanta man began putting his affairs in order and arranging his funeral.

Justin Falls/Daily Advance (ENLARGE)

Bill Campbell digs a grave in Honey Creek Woodlands, a 'green cemetery' he and wife Kimberley helped open last month on the grounds of the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, Ga. Remains will be buried without embalming or nonbiodegradable coffins.

Echols never liked the idea of an embalmed body lying in a casket, a semblance of a former self, displayed for grieving family and friends. Cremation didn't appeal to him, either.

Then Echols read an article about "green" cemeteries. In stretches of meadow and forest, remains are interred without formaldehyde, cement vault, even coffin (if that was the deceased's wish), ultimately becoming part of the soil. Tombs can be marked with medallions that fit in the palm of the hand; no granite slabs interrupt the landscape. To Echols, it sounded like a good way to start eternity.

A South Carolina couple, Dr. Bill Campbell and his wife, Kimberley, pioneered the current incarnation of this style of burial in the United States. Ferguson contacted the Campbells and learned that they were helping the Monastery of the Holy Spirit near Conyers open such a graveyard on its property.

Six months after his diagnosis, on a sunny morning in October, Echols' body became the first to be buried at Honey Creek Woodlands in Conyers. Ferguson and other family members helped shovel earth onto his sturdy cardboard coffin, then sprinkled it with wildflower petals from the surrounding field. They said the Lord's Prayer and the Serenity Prayer and murmured private goodbyes.

"It was beautiful," said Ferguson, 64, of Brenham, Texas. "I don't have any qualms about doing it that way. In fact, my husband and I said that's where we're going when it's time."

Though Echols was buried last fall, Honey Creek officially opened last month. His interment on the 2,100-acre tract signaled Georgia's entry into a small but rising segment of the multibillion-dollar funeral industry.

In many ways green burial harks back to the way bodies were buried before the Civil War, and, with its shunning of embalming, it has something in common with burial practices of some faiths, including Islam, Judaism and the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).

But what sets Honey Creek and a handful of other such cemeteries apart is its underlying mission: using these burials as a way to curb development of exurban and rural land. Final resting place as the ultimate conservancy.

"We want to create a new corporate culture surrounding death," said Bill Campbell. "If Ben and Jerry's can sell ice cream by being socially responsible, why couldn't that concept work here? This is all about renewal. We want to save a million acres."

Graveyard as ecosystem

Father Francis Michael Stiteler's pickup truck took the rugged passage to the 30-acre first phase of Honey Creek with confidence.

Over a stream, through the green of dogwood and chalk maple and under the dappled shade of pine, the GMC rumbled, then reached the summit of a clear-cut 600-foot red clay hill.

"With people being buried here, it is a way of bringing new life and renewal," Stiteler said as the Campbells joined him on the hilltop about a mile off Highway 212. "And hopefully it'll protect the property ... For the foreseeable future, it'll stay pristine surely for as long as we own it."

An acquaintance introduced Stiteler, the Trappist abbot at Holy Spirit, and the Campbells about two years ago.

Kimberley is from England, where the green burial movement gathered steam in the early 1990s. Fascinated by the idea that burial could be simplified, less expensive, yet no less reverent than a traditional burial, the Campbells opened Ramsey Creek Preserve — believed to be America's first conservancy cemetery — in Westminster, S.C., in 1998.

Ramsey Creek began on 33 acres. As burials occur, a portion of the fees charged goes into a fund to buy nearby land as it becomes available. About 100 people from around the country have been buried there, in everything from full military funerals to simple interment of cremated remains.

The Campbells helped others start similar cemeteries through their company, Memorial Ecosystems. There are now about a dozen such graveyards across the country, though not all were assisted by Memorial Ecosystems.

Bill Campbell wrote guidelines for the national Green Burial Council, a nonprofit advisory group, as a way of establishing what constitutes a green cemetery. For example, bodies in green cemeteries cannot be embalmed and caskets must be biodegradeable; conservation easements should be obtained.

"Look, I'm not a crystal-toting, astrology-believing kind of guy," said Bill Campbell. "But it seemed to us that this would be the kind of thing the monks would be interested in."

Stiteler said the monastery is using about $200,000 of its own money for startup of the cemetery. The abbott knows some might consider Honey Creek "new age-y." However, he said, "When I came here in 1974, we didn't even have shrouds [for monks' burials]. That's how we've been doing it for centuries."

But for about 150 years, that's not the way most people have been doing it.

Mark Harris' recent book, "Grave Matters: A Journey Through the Modern Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial," documents the rise of embalming. Since the Civil War, when Abraham Lincoln's body was preserved for public view on the route from the White House to Illinois, embalming gained popularity until it became the norm. That's why the Campbells see their movement as neotraditional.

Industry is taking note

After a recent meeting of the State Board of Cemeterians in Atlanta, a few members remained afterward to discuss green burials with a reporter. They'd all heard of them, and on the surface, seemed to regard them with some amusement.

"I'm in the Bible Belt of South Georgia, so I know nobody in my area is gonna want it," said Richard Parker, president of Brunswick Memorial Park Cemetery in Brunswick. "The people who'd want this are the people who'd want their ashes scattered."

But Dan Greene of Evergreen Memorial Park in Athens pointed out there was a time many people frowned on cremation.

"We're at 50 percent cremation now in Athens," Greene said. "So you have to prepare for this, because it's coming."

Slowly, the industry is taking note. Last month, the American Funeral Director trade magazine featured an article titled "Going Green: Be Prepared to Answer Questions on Green Burials."

"This movement is being led by baby boomers, the group that ushered in the first Earth Day, advocated natural childbirth and who brought the organics movement into the mainstream," said "Grave Matters" author Harris.

Separating fact from fiction regarding the fledgling green movement can be difficult. For example, many people believe that embalming is legally required. It's not. In fact, for centuries many Christian groups associated embalming with defiling the human body.

Some have questioned whether natural burial has the potential to contaminate surrounding ground water. A 2001 study commissioned by the British Parliament concluded that contamination risks are remote. Others have suggested that the scent of decay could attract animals that might dig up the bodies. But the Green Burial Council says that has not happened at any of its cemeteries.

Then there are issues of cost. A formal burial with metal casket can top $10,000. A green burial costs $2,500 to $5,000.

"What's happened is people are questioning, 'Should we spend $15,000 on a casket that people are going to see for 30 minutes? Instead, money could be put into my child's or grandchild's education fund,' " said Kimberley Campbell.

A long way to go

In his mind's eye, Father Stiteler sees the day when the barren hill of Honey Creek is covered with blazing star, goldenrod, native grasses and trees. There will be a water feature, a tiny chapel and, perhaps, a bike trail. People of all faiths will be interred there and the money from their funerals used to buy other land to preserve.

But there's a long way to go. Last October, the first two cremated remains were laid to rest at Honey Creek, not far from where Harry E. Echols was buried. The remains are those of Linda Mitchell's husband, Robert, and her mother.

Robert Mitchell died suddenly last year and Linda Mitchell, of Conyers, had to make decisions quickly.

As a member of the monastery's lay community, she knew about the planned cemetery and decided it was the right place — both for her husband and her mom, who died in 2002 and whose remains had been in Linda's care.

"Rob and I both tried to be very good stewards of the Earth," Mitchell said. "We loved to garden and, in our garden, it was organic. I plan for my ashes to go over there when the time comes, right next to Rob."