As the popularity of environmentally friendly burials increases, some wonder if traditional coffins and tombstones will become passé. (James A. Finley/Associated Press)

Cynthia Beal, of The Natural Burial Company in Portland, Ore., shows the Ecopod, a kayak-shaped coffin made out of recycled newspaper that was developed in the U.K. (Greg Wahl-Stephens/Associated Press)

In an era when people spend more time sorting garbage than creating it, what better way to end your days on earth than in an environmentally friendly resting place?

Instead of a metal casket placed in a vault lined with concrete, environmentally aware Canadians will soon have the opportunity to choose to be buried in biodegradable boxes or cloth shrouds. That's because green burials have finally arrived in Canada.

Later this year, Royal Oak Burial Park in Victoria opens its natural burial site, believed to be the first of its kind in Canada. Executive director Stephen Olson explains that the company is responding to the community's wishes: "There's a tremendous amount of interest around green burials."

Olson says Royal Oak is developing a third of an acre of its cemetery for green burials. "The area where people will be interred will look like a meadow in the middle of the forest. After people are buried there, trees will be planted over top. Instead of traditional gravestones, there will be a common marker, likely a boulder where names can be marked."

Olson says caskets will be biodegradable and made of wood products, as well as unbleached recycled cardboard with a rigid base. "We want the casket to break down when the body is interred in the grave."

Thousand of kilometres away in Guelph, Ont., the green burial movement is gathering speed under the wing of alderman Mike Salisbury. He hasn't pre-planned his own funeral, but he's attempting to change the choices offered to other Canadians.

"In so many ways, I find the conventional box, ceremony and funeral so unfulfilling," Salisbury says. "They talk about dust to dust and a return to the earth in the conventional Christian ceremony, but right now the way it's done doesn't seem like you're being returned to the earth."

Salisbury is the executive director of the Natural Burial Co-operative. His group is working with a landowner an hour north of Guelph who has 40 hectares (100 acres) of land he is willing to sell to them, once the land has been rezoned for cemetery use. That rezoning process is under way now.

Salisbury explains, "Natural burials aren't illegal. It's only impossible if a cemetery operator says it's against their rules, but it's not illegal."

In fact, Doug Smith, author of a book about the funeral industry titled Big Death, says he can see the concept taking off in Canada.

"Green burials are a viable alternative in Britain, so it's definitely possible here," he says. "Look at how many people have their relatives' ashes in their closets. Years ago, that would have been unthinkable. In fact, in 1963, when Jessica Mitford wrote The American Way of Death, only 3 per cent of Britons were cremated. That number now stands at 50 per cent."

Salisbury envisages a process with only a positive environmental impact. "A green burial allows your body to be absorbed by the earth. You effectively become plant food. Your body becomes a conservation tool, so that the cemetery becomes a natural protected area as a result."

As well, since the casket breaks down, embalming fluid is not used. Salisbury says, "A lot of people find the idea of flooding their body with all of these unnatural chemicals in the end in order to make them look like they are asleep rather than dead is denying the fact they're dead."

Gordon Ropchan, the president of Imperial Evergreen Casket of Burnaby, B.C., sells a number of products suitable for natural burials. "We have caskets made of an unfinished paperboard product, solid pine, or cloth-covered particle board. We also have a burial shroud, like a cloth envelope, made of hemp cloth, as well as casket-shaped woven baskets."

While cemetery owners can offer green burial sites, one stumbling block is that most people don't even want to make funeral arrangements. The decision is usually made quickly after a death. Ropchan says he can't advertise his products, and people likely wouldn't want to see them anyway.

Another problem is that burying kin more naturally means not using the traditional gravestones. As Olson says, "It all comes down to that moment where they find they can't put down a marker. You can't visit it like a traditional monument, but there are different ways to remember someone."

The cost of an eco-friendly burial is not much less than a traditional burial. But as Salisbury says, "It's about the values we have more than the cost. Much of it is a response to the changing values of our time. People are becoming more dissatisfied with the mechanized lifestyle that we have that epitomizes the standard funeral."

As for cremation, which can release dangerous chemicals into the air, Salisbury finds it lacks meaning. He says, "Someone once said that if I am buried and roots grow down through my bones and that nourishes the fruit on a tree, the berries are picked by the birds, well that's a way of living forever in the physical sense. It's the ultimate in recycling."