Green burials: The growing appeal of new Earth-conscious interment

Saturday is Earth Day, a day that's been observed annually since 1970 to draw attention to the problems facing the global environment. Today on Midday, two environmental movements that are rapidly gaining interest and adherents: the green burial movement and sustainable fashion. A little later we’ll talk about how the Johns Hopkins Women’s Board is giving new life to old clothes, and cutting down on the environmental impact of discarding textiles. But we begin today with a conversation about green burials, which perhaps can be best described by listing what’s not involved rather than what is. No embalming, no concrete grave liners, no non-biodegradable caskets. Instead, bodies are returned to the earth naturally, with no deleterious effect on the environment. Jennifer Downs is the founder and chair of the Green Burial Association of Maryland, or GBAM. She joins Tom in Studio A… Lee Webster joins us as well. She’s a past president of the Green Burial Council. She’s served in leadership of the National Home Funeral Alliance, and she helped found the National End-of-Life Doula Alliance and Conservation Burial Alliance. She’s also written several books about green burials. Lee Webster joins us on Zoom from Holderness, New Hampshire.Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.