In considering death, French actress Brigitte Bardot lamented, “It’s the decomposition that gets me. You spend your whole life looking after your body. And then you rot away.”

Some of us appreciate the power of decomposition and want to rot away after our death. A burial prayer goes further, “we now commit this body to the ground: earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” Modern American burials may not allow for those aspirations.

It is a peculiar pickle into which we have put ourselves with the practice of embalming. The custom began during the Civil War, though it wasn’t until the turn of the 20th century that embalming became the norm for the treatment of dead human bodies destined for burial.

Modern burial consists of embalming a body, putting it in a hardwood or metal casket, and burying it in a cement vault. These activities use many resources and have natural resource and environmental consequences. Consider that 1.6 tons of concrete, 4.3 million gallons of chemical embalming fluid, 79,500 tons of steel, 2,700 tons of copper and bronze and 20-plus million board feet of hardwoods are buried annually with our preserved bodies.

Almost half of American dead are now being cremated instead of having regular cemetery burials. This practice has risen greatly in popularity in the last 20 years. Cremation reduces some of the above inputs, but has its own ecological issues, including the release of air pollutants such as carbon dioxide, mercury and dioxin, use of fossil fuels and high energy consumption.

There is another option for those of us who want our deaths to resemble our lives in terms of eco-consciousness.  Green burial is an environmentally friendly exit strategy that aims to encourage decomposition, reduce toxins, and the return of the body to the soil. The practice acknowledges the connection between people and the earth, well described by Wendell Berry who explained, “The fertility cycle is a cycle entirely of living creatures passing again and again through birth, growth, maturity, death and decay.”

Green burial harkens back to the days before the Civil War, when simplicity ruled the day of death. This is the common practice just about everywhere else in the world, since approximately 90 per cent of burials worldwide are done this simple way. 

The practice eschews embalming and many of the aforementioned practices. Bodies are interred in biodegradable materials, such as soft wood, cardboard, cloth shroud or even cardboard, and it is preferable that there is contact between the body and the soil. No vault or cement grave liner is used and the body is buried 3 to 4 feet below the surface to encourage bacterial degradation.

Even the grave marker is different with green burials. A natural fieldstone or indigenous material may be used, but is often flat against the ground instead of vertical. A plant or other natural material can mark the grave, though it is usually required that computer mapping such as GPS be used to positively identify the grave’s location.

Green burial is legal in Massachusetts and is allowed on one’s own land. There are, of course, regulations to protect human health and the environment. Sometimes a survey is necessary with the location marked and its location even written into the land’s deed. Also, permission from the local Board of Health in necessary before any excavation for interment commences.

For the seafaring among us, letting the crabs nibble your ears and toes after death is another option. Burial at sea is also allowed if in accordance with the regulations of the US Navy, Coast Guard and other authorities. Non-cremated remains must be disposed of in waters at least three nautical miles from land and at a minimum 600 feet deep. However, to reach that depth, it is more likely that you would have to go 25 to 75 miles offshore. And, of course, the body must be sufficiently weighted down so it will sink quickly and permanently. For cremated remains, there is no depth requirement but the greater than three nautical miles rule remains.

If the idea of critters nibbling at your nether bits isn’t appealing, do consider the death in the dirt option. It conserves natural resources, protects groundwater, costs less and returns nutrients to the soil. It has the added benefit of some form of perpetuity, if as Norwegian painter Edvard Munch recognized, “From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity.”

Suzan Bellincampi is director of the Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary in Edgartown, and author of Martha’s Vineyard: A Field Guide to Island Nature.