It turns out that leaving this world can be bad for the environment. In our efforts to preserve ourselves via costly boxes and toxic fluid that keeps us looking fresh, we are infecting the earth. This process also hurts the pocket book ($6000).
So, how about a biodegradable coffin or urn, and skip the embalming fluid. Here are a few burial facts regarding what goes underground each year:
-30 million board feet of casket wood, including tropical hardwoods
-90,000 tons of steel, more than enough to build the Golden Gate Bridge
-1.6 million tons of concrete in burial vaults
-over 800,000 gallons of embalming fluid, more than enough to fill an Olympic-size pool
(This great information come from the July issue of National Geographic.)
"The words were everything. They were the whole of my life as I had ever felt it and the whole of beauty as I had ever dared to suspect it." P. Tickle
2 comments:
I read that article! I was kind of surprised that it was only 1 Olympic sized pool, compared to how many millions of board feet of wood. It must not take very much embalming fluid per person! But still, eeuw....
Also, I have a wedding dress, but size 0 to 8, are you kidding? I believe my dress came as size 14 and was altered down to 10/12. Surely someone could take it and make it into several size 2's right? Oh well. I guess I will keep it for now.
yeah i recently heard that funeral home directors have to use LESS formaldehyde to embalm people because it is more commonly used these days in cosmetic, perm pressed fabrics and of course in pressed woods and insulation. yummy. there's another name for it so it doesn't show up on your make-up bottle as formadehyde...just can't find out what that is.
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