Show Summary:
What makes a green burial…green? And what exactly is embalming fluid? Can you drink it? Joe Sehee, founder of the Green Burial Council, answers those questions and how cemeteries can operate in an environmentally conscious way. Note: This is Part One of a two part interview.
New from Brant Huddleston
For Christmas 2018, my brother, a pilot with American Airlines, gave me a gift that became the experience of a lifetime: 12 months of free travel anywhere American Airlines flies.
Thus began a year long journey that took me from the rocky coasts of Portugal, to the hot sands of Morocco, to the mangrove swamps of Panama, with many places beyond and between. In cheap hostels and the backwaters of the nomadic milieu, I discovered a treasure chest of colorful and fascinating people. I tell their stories and a bit of my own.
The trip became as much a spiritual and emotional journey inward as it was a literal outward one, and found me in a place those of you who are in the second half of life are likely to recognize.
With references to the philosophies of Carl Gustav Jung, Jesus, Bob Dylan, and the Buddha, Blue Skyways is an international romp by a man in his 60’s with not much more than a pack on his back, and still much to learn.
So sit back, relax, and enjoy a flight on my Blue Skyways.
Show Details
You pick up a bottle of laundry detergent at the grocery store, and it’s labeled “green” and is twice the price of regular detergent. But is it really safer for the environment? Often we just don’t know. Well it turns out green standards for the funeral industry are just as murky and unregulated, and there are some who will sell you and an expensive green funeral that really isn’t…a practice called “greenwashing.” My guest, Joe Sehee, believes consumers should have access to objective information, so he founded the Green Burial Council, which established rigorous green standards for cemeteries who truly want to operate in an environmentally conscious way.
Today the GBC, an international organization, protects consumers like you and me from greenwashing and gives legitimate green cemetery operators an opportunity to voluntarily become GBC certified, which many have. I caught up with Joe in Australia where he and his family live. Joe starts our time together by taking us on a virtual tour of a natural cemetery, and wrap up with a lively discussion about embalming fluid. Salute!
In this episode you will learn about:
- “The Sunflower Forest” by William Jordan, who coined the term “Restoration Ecology”
- “Dying Green,” a film by Ellen Tripler
- The Ramsey Creek Preserve, founded by Dr. Billy Campbell and his wife Kimberley Campbell, is the first conservation burial ground in the United States
- End of Life Revolution brought on by Baby Boomers
- Why we have burial vaults (Hint: It isn’t to thwart grave robbing)
- Conservation Burial, a new initiative by Joe Sehee
- Natural body preparation
- Memorial reef balls
- Greenwashing
- World Health Organization Report on The Impact of Cemeteries on the Environment and Public Health
- Formaldehyde is biodegradable
- 2010 JNCI Journal of the National Cancer Institute on the effects of formaldehyde on funeral workers
- What goes into embalming fluid
Other "Green" Shows that Might Interest You
- A Natural, Earth Friendly Way to Come Back as a Tree, with Bios Urn Co-Inventor Roger Moline Navarro
- Where, How and Why to Choose a Green Burial with Ann Hoffner, author of "The Natural Burial Cemetery Guide: A State-by-State Guide. (in two parts)
- Going Out Green with Jeff Jorgenson, Director of Elemental NW ~ Seattle’s first and only all green funeral home
- As Below, So Above, with Joe Sehee, Founder of the Green Burial Council (in two parts)
- From Earth to Earth ~ Respectfully Composting Human Remains, with Susanne Wiigh-Mäsak, Founder of Promessa (in two parts)
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Presto and grazie!
