Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes”

HD Thoreau, 1854

I recommend episode 6 of the 2024 series of Springwatch, where a speeded up film of a dead squirrel (slide to 42 minutes in) is shown being cycled back to the earth. It really is a magnificent and good thing to watch. There was no plastic lined coffin, no fire, no embalming, no pollution. It was just the myriad of creatures in the bed of the forest that gathered and danced to a tune of time itself, to transform this squirrel back into soil, which then feeds the trees and vegetation surrounding it.

In our messy human emotions and relationships within society, we have turned the questions of what we do with the body of a loved one into a chain of complication which I personally find troubling.

Environment

There is an implication that lavishing money on the funeral of someone who has died somehow shows how much we care. We are at our most vulnerable during these times and can often succumb to a predatory style of marketing; lavishly styled coffins made of precious imported timbers, or more often MDF coffins laden with glues and plastics which increase emissions from crematorium chimneys; showy imported flowers; embalming, heavy marble or granite headstones quarried from remote countries. The environmental impact continues long after internment of a body or ashes, where over-manicured lawn cemeteries deny nature any voice. In churchyards up and down the country a strict regime of strimming slaughters any wildlife (especially insects) struggling to thrive in close clipped grass.

In recent years, especially since the pandemic, there is increasing awareness of the harm to the environment a funeral may have and enquiries for more nature friendly options is increasing. I feel sure that most people really do care about the environment, especially when it comes to our final resting place.

We are nature

We are stardust is a common epithet. There is a poetic beauty in this, for our dead to be burnt and our particles to enter the skies - the heavens - as “stardust”.

However, in the light of the human-made effects on planet Earth; loss of biodiversity, pollution of air, sea and land and deforestation, it is perhaps time we re-imagine this narrative to one that is more in tune with nature, with the squirrel, reflecting and acknowledging we are nature, not apart from nature.

The occasions when we gather at a funeral to celebrate and reflect on a life now gone gives us the rare opportunity to reflect on our own lives, our connections with nature and the universe and our own mortality.

A natural burial funeral, 2011. Image: Juliette Mills

The importance of these ceremonies cannot be understated. Funeral culture is slowly changing and the internet gives us the opportunity to change these events to more eco-friendly choices which tend, by their nature, to be much cheaper as long as we are savvy enough to cut through any greenwash.

Simplify

The law requires that a body after death must be decently clad. That is all. There is no UK law that requires the use of a coffin, or embalming for that matter, which is commonly practiced in the UK and the US and 99% unnecessary. These chemicals - mostly formaldehyde - are extremely toxic to us and the environment.

A shroud is universal; the simplest and lightest form for covering a body. According to a new report on the impacts of funerals on the climate and environment, the lowest impact funeral is a natural burial in a shroud, free of plastic and chemicals.

Sheep are part of our culture in the UK, and the wool, removed annually, can also be processed within these shores, which helps to cut carbon miles.

My customers have come to realise they want something simple either for their own funeral or that of a loved one.

The Leafcocoon is a simple shroud of felted wool, held by six strong handles and a sturdy integrated wooden frame. I have been making them since 2004 and in its earlier evolution it consisted of nine pattern pieces cut and sewn on my industrial sewing machine. Triggered by a power cut, I decided to simplify the pattern to reduce time spent on the machine.

I discovered the beauty of pleating; methodically folding and securing the corners of the shroud with hedgerow hazel wood toggles, thus creating a cocoon out of one pattern piece, rather than nine. I found this eloquence very pleasing and also realised that this would be a much easier pattern to pass on to my successors.

Reducing Carbon

Carbon counting is currently in its infancy and a moveable feast as we learn more about what that actually means. It comes down to a myriad of nuances such as soil management, effects on biodiversity, distances travelled, use of fossil fuels, not forgetting ethical concerns; animal husbandry (sheep/wool), how we treat staff, including those mining lithium in order to run our hearse fleets, quarrying marble for headstones, growing hothouse flowers in Venezuela. So any carbon counting and reporting will, year on year, change as the chain of providers learn how to reduce their impacts and society learns how to modify habits.

I received a Platinum award by the Greener Globe Funeral Services in 2024. It took me many weeks to answer the complex questionnaire. It felt like a huge validation of my instincts 25 years ago, when I first set out to design the Leafcocoon; lifting the lid right off and thinking outside the box!

In the questionnaire the topic I liked most was about upcycling; sourcing discarded fabrics, rather than buying in ‘virgin’ materials, such as cotton strapping. I needed the endorsement that it is a good thing to use discarded fabrics to make straps, handles and returnable postal bags. This was something I have always done, but felt embarrassed to mention in my publicity, thinking that people would find this shocking and demeaning. The opposite is true! The beauty of this is that funeral directors and customers have commented on the extra efforts I go to in order to reduce the environmental impacts. My costs for this aspect are donations to Proper Job (our local reuse and recycling enterprise) and my time in re-fashioning the materials. The environmental costs have come closer to zero.

The Final Frontier

A burial in a sealed coffin creates a cavity and prevents connection with the surrounding soil. Decomposition is slowed down and takes many years to complete. There are synthetic materials in the majority of coffins which cannot be consumed by soil organisms and therefore cause similar problems to micro plastic pollution in our oceans and air.

But a burial in natural fabrics will have direct contact with the soil and natural decomposition begins straight away. It also requires a much shallower grave.

Resilience

For any crafter/maker, it is a pleasure and always satisfying to adapt, economise, simplify and develop resourcefulness, and even more so in these turbulent times, using nature as our guide.

Lifting the Lid off…

Therapy through making