Mount Pleasant, Chapel Hill going green
Tuesday, October 26th, 2010By Rob Swenson
October 15, 2008
Increasingly, people are living and working green.
Now you can even die in a more environmentally friendly way.
Mount Pleasant Cemetery is beginning to offer green burials. And Chapel Hill Funeral Home soon will start offering green funeral services.
Randy Pudwill, director of grounds at Mount Pleasant, said the nonprofit cemetery recently was approved by the Green Burial Council to offer green burials. Mount Pleasant is the first certified provider in South Dakota and might be the first in the Midwest, Pudwill said.
“It’s basically a return to a traditional, simpler approach,” he says.
The key components of a green burial are:
• The deceased is not embalmed.
• No outer container, such as a vault, is used in the burial.
• The casket is made out of a renewable material, such as a soft wood that degrades easily.
“Some people will like it for environmental reasons. Some people will like it for financial reasons,” Pudwill says.
Mount Pleasant, which is along East 12th Street, is considered hybrid green because it has provided burial services of various kinds for 135 years, Pudwill says.
Doug Houseman, owner of Chapel Hill, says that since the World War II-era, cemeteries generally have required outer burial containers. That has been the biggest impediment to green services. Now Mount Pleasant and Chapel Hill plan to work together.
Chapel Hill expects to receive its certification as a green provider this month, Houseman says. Approved caskets are expected to arrive any day.
“I think, overall, it’s just another option we make available along with traditional and cremations and those things. It’s just another option for families, and it’s fairly cost-effective as well,” Houseman says.
Green funerals impose deadlines, too. The law allows an unembalmed body to be refrigerated for only 72 hours before committal.
