Many people prefer cremation because they've heard about environmental issues with contemporary American burials.

Many American burials are problematic for the environment. Over 180,544,000 pounds of steel and 5,400,000 pounds of copper and bronze from metal caskets are put into the ground each year in American cemeteries. (1)

Embalming is terrible for the environment: More than 120 gallons of untreated "funeral waste" goes directly into the sink per embalming, meaning 827,060 gallons of embalming fluid, including carcinogenic formaldehyde (2) goes into the ground each year.

Why should we waste precious land on the dead?

Cremation seems like an eco-friendly land-saving alternative, and is often promoted as such. With a little research, however, the facts come to light. They are discussed in detail on this site.

1. Cremation uses up an extremely high amount of fossil fuels

2. Cremation releases a disturbing amount of toxins (including mercury) into the air
   Burials use up a shockingly small amount of land, and there is plenty of land available – in fact, if all Americans were buried, it would take 10,000 years to use only 1% of America's land mass, and presumably few, if any, cemeteries would survive that long! Complaining about wasting space on graveyards is like a herd of buffaloes in a huge open plain complaining about the space that a family of mice take up!

3. The green movement is not in favor of cremation, rather it promotes "green burial" without embalming or metal caskets

4. Jewish tradition forbids metal caskets and embalming making Jewish burials a model of eco-consciousness

In sum, American burials are bad for the environment, but this is almost completely due to metal caskets and embalming, both of which are against Jewish tradition. Cremation's environmental hazards are much worse.

Cremation is not the choice of environmentalists around the world — burial (with no embalming or metal caskets) is.

As Slate Magazine reports “modern crematories don't run on lollipops and puppy dog tails—most use a combination of natural gas and electricity to incinerate their occupants. One leading manufacturer [stated] that a typical machine requires about 2,000 cubic feet of natural gas and 4 kilowatt-hours of electricity per body.” (3)

Another writer commented, “on the surface, cremation seems like a more friendly and convenient way to deal with the bodily remains of a loved one. But, let's consider the impact of this truly industrial process … the amount of non-renewable fossil fuel needed to cremate bodies in North America is equivalent to a car making 84 trips to the Moon and back … each year. (4)

One industry leader, B&L Cremation Systems, reports that its models use over 2,000,000 Btu per hour. Many other systems use between 1.2 and 2 or 2.2 million Btu per hour. (5)

Btu stands for a British thermal unit, a standard unit allowing us to compare different methods of energy production and use. For example, a home gas furnace will usually use about 60,000 Btu per hour, and one gallon of gasoline provides 124,000 Btu.

Take two more examples from another industry leader. One Crawford model, the Elite Cremation System Model C1000H, uses 1,200,000 Btu per hour and uses 12 gallons of LP fuel per hour. (6) Per cremation, this adds up to at least 2,000,000 Btu's used, or about 20 gallons of fuel. A second Crawford model, the Ultimate Cremation System Model C1000S, estimates 2,100,000 BTU per hour and uses 21 gallons of LP fuel per hour. (7) This means that almost 3,000,000 Btu's are used - over 25 gallons of fuel – per cremation.

Also, note that industry fuel-efficiency claims are lower — sometimes significantly so — than reality. One manufacturer publicly admitted:

“When a customer makes a choice to purchase a Crematory, probably the most important feature is fuel consumption, because it relates to the bottom line every time you operate your equipment. No other cremation function will have such a sizable effect on your operation. It seems that each manufacturer states they have the lowest fuel consumption and the fuel data they have provided you with is not really what the equipment uses.” (8)

In other words, cremations use up an enormous amount of fossil fuels, which as we know are the single greatest polluters of the environment. No wonder the green movement pushes green burials – with no embalming or metal caskets – and is opposed to cremation.

Earth burial helps the ground. When any living organism dies and returns to the earth, its body itself benefits the earth greatly. As author and environmentalist Mark Harris put,

“As it decays, the body releases into the surrounding soil its cache of organic nutrients. The microbes, insects, and other organisms that attend a decaying corpse further nourish the ground with their leavings and remains; they also aerate the dirt, loosening compacted earth and thereby creating fertile ground...” (9)

Unfortunately, many modern funerals negate this blessing to the earth through embalming and metal caskets. (10) Embalming is unnecessary in the vast majority of cases today and not required by law (refrigeration is more than adequate), and it releases toxic chemicals into the earth. Metal caskets add tons of non-biodegradable metal into the ground, delaying and negating the positive effects of the body itself.

If one avoids embalming and chooses a simple wooden casket, (11) burial is in fact a blessing to the earth. Decomposition is a positive natural process that adds nutrients, health, and fertility to Planet Earth. As one writer puts it,

“To allow, and even invite, the decay of one"s physical body — its tissues and bone, its cache of organic components — and return what remains to the very elements it sprang from, as directly and simply as possible … to give back to the earth some very small measure of the vast resources they drew from it in life and, in the process, perpetuate the cycles of nature, of growth and decay, of death and rebirth, that sustain us all.” (12)

Compare this to cremation. In a modern cremation, the casket is placed in the retort (the cremation chamber), and the temperature is raised to approximately 1600–1800 degrees Fahrenheit (871–982 degrees Celsius).

What is left after cremation?

“After approximately 2 to 2.5 hours, all organic matter is consumed by heat and vaporization. The residue remaining is bone fragments (more commonly referred to as ashes), which are then carefully removed from the cremation chamber.” (13)

In other words, the whole point of modern cremation is to burn away almost the entire body. The cremation industry prides itself on the efficacy of their burners — nothing is left but bone fragments, which are then scooped up and ground into a fine dust.

While efficient, cremation — by definition — prevents a body’s nutrients from enriching the ground.

Think of it this way:

• Plant a seed and growth can occur: When a plant or living organism decomposes, the ground is given new life.

• Try burning a seed and then planting it: Growth is impossible. Burnt ashes provide no fertilizer and no growth.

As human beings, our bodies are nourished from the ground. Fruit. Vegetables. Grains. Water. Meat. Directly or indirectly, our bodies live through the nutrients we receive from the ground. Burial is a blessing to our planet, returning our bodies to the land.

Cremation, on the other hand, burns the nutrients and gives nothing back to the planet that gave us so much.

Environmentalists do not favor cremation. They suggest (14) returning to a purer form of burial, skipping embalming, choosing a simple wood coffin (or just shrouds), and making smaller eco-decisions along the way – all of which is in line with Jewish thought.

Environmentalists are very concerned about cremation's toxic emissions:

"Scrubbers, filters, and after-chambers can reduce but not entirely eliminate the raft of pollutants generated by the incineration of a human body. Carbon monoxide (a common product of combustion) and fine soot comprise the primary emissions, but sulfur dioxide (from combustion of the natural gas fuelant) and trace metals (from body parts, among others) may also be produced.

Of all emissions, however, mercury poses the biggest threat to the health of the living. The toxic metal, which is linked to brain and neurological damage in children, is found in dental amalgams.

The cremation retort's high temps vaporize any mercury in dental fillings of the deceased, sending the metal up the stack and into the atmosphere. From there it's carried by prevailing winds, some of it falling into lakes and streams, where it's taken up by fish and other aquatic life — and eventually by humans who consume them." (15)

The cremation industry claims that they comply with government standards and that new technologies have cut down on dangerous emissions. The problem is that: (a) very few crematories possess the new technologies; and (b) in most places, standards are weak or nonexistent.

In reality, as the New World Encyclopedia reports:

"There exists a body of research that indicates cremation has a significant impact on the environment. Major emissions from crematories include nitrogen oxide, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter, mercury, hydrogen fluoride, hydrogen chloride, and other heavy metals, in addition to Persistent Organic Pollutants (POP)." (16)

Another commentator gave numbers to the effects of operating a cremation oven:

"A typical machine requires about 2,000 cubic feet of natural gas and 4 kilowatt-hours of electricity per body. That means the average cremation produces about 250 pounds of CO2 equivalent, or about as much as a typical American home generates in six days." (17)

No wonder the green movement is not in favor of cremation.

 1 Joelle Novey, "Greening Your Final Arrangements," Green American, July/August 2008

2 "EPA regulates formaldehyde as a hazardous waste, yet every embalming includes over three pounds of it each burial" (Harris, Grave Matters, 40).

3 Nina Rastogi, "The Green Hereafter," February 17, 2009.

4 "Hal Stevens, "Cremation or Burial — Carbon Emissions and the Environment," The Free Library, April 21, 2009.

5 See the websites of Crawford, B & L, Mathews, and others.

6 Crawford Industrial Group, LLC, Predicted Operational Cost Analysis, Elite Cremation System Model C1000H.

7 Crawford Industrial Group, LLC Predicted Operational Cost Analysis Ultimate Cremation System — Model C1000S.

8 B & L information packet received in May 2009, "Fuel Efficiency."

9 Ibid., 172.

10 Roughly three-quarters of caskets sold today are metal (ibid., 135).

11 Thus following Jewish law, as well.

12 Ibid., 2.

13 National Cremation Society, "The Cremation Process"

14 Do an Internet search for “green burial” and see the results.

15 Harris, Grave Matters, 61.

16 New World Encyclopedia, s.v. "Cremation".

17 Rastogi, "The Green Hereafter," February 17, 2009.