This commentary is by Reuben J. McNeil of Burlington, a first-year student in the master’s degree program in social work at the University of Vermont.
Have you put thought into what you’d like to be done with your body after you die? I’ve heard a variety of answers from people when I ask that question, and I’m always delighted to hear their reasoning.
Recently, I’ve noticed a rise in green answers, folks who want to be buried naturally, composted, or undergo alkaline hydrolysis — or “aquamation,” for those in the know.
The first, at least, is not new. I’ve known people who’d like to be buried in their backyard under a tree for as long as I can remember. As we become more aware of our tenuous climate reality, however, it seems a growing majority of us want to give ourselves back to the earth rather than being embalmed and buried in a resource-intensive casket within a grave liner — the modern purpose of which is mostly to make it easier for lawnmowers to operate within the cemetery.
Unfortunately, these more environmentally friendly options are, like many things in Vermont, often limited to those who can pay.
33 V.S.A. § 2301, Burial Responsibility, is the main statute that guides Vermont’s approach to funeral affordability recipients. To summarize, Vermont offers financial assistance to individuals already receiving aid from the state, as well as honorably discharged veterans, with up to $1,100 available to eligible applicants to be used to help pay for the disposition costs of the deceased.
This is meant to help support low-income individuals and families, individuals whose care is the responsibility of the state, and military veterans who have served the country by covering some or all of the cost of disposition. However, the eligibility requirements are high, with the full payment of $1,100 available only to those with total known assets of less than $1,100.
This pittance is not enough to pay for the average cost of direct cremation in Vermont, $2,295 — approximately one-sixth of the annual income of an individual living at the federal poverty level. Even then, direct cremation, which is a cremation without any funerary service and only the simplest of containers, may be the only viable option for low-income individuals and families.
For a state that prides itself on its greenness, it’s strange that we would push so many people toward cremation. While cremation is less land-intensive than burial and does not contribute to pollution through the use of embalming fluids, it is heavily reliant on unsustainable fuels such as oil, natural gas, propane, or even coal gas. Cremation may also contribute to air pollution in the areas around crematories, including the release of mercury with the destruction of amalgamate dental fillings.
More environmentally friendly options, such as natural burial, may be out of reach due to cost, while others, such as recomposition or alkaline hydrolysis, may be legal but not have any facilities within the state.
To address this, I suggest a few things.
Firstly, we must lower the high eligibility requirements for funerary assistance, as well as raise the offered benefit to $9,000. This is not unprecedented. $9,000 is what Vermont currently offers to cover the disposition of victims of crimes through the Center of Crime Victim Services, as well as what was granted under FEMA Covid-19 funeral assistance. This is enough to cover the cost of a range of disposition options, as well as the cost of funerary services and memorial objects such as headstones, urns, or plaques.
Secondly, we must invest in facilities that can offer environmentally friendly disposition options such as recomposition and alkaline hydrolysis. Again, we would not be the first. Washington state has composting capacity, while Alabama, California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Utah and Washington have alkaline hydrolysis facilities, with other states in the process of gaining capacity or legalization. Vermont could help relieve the currently limited availability of the East Coast.
Finally, we need to keep our minds and hearts open to new, or at least new to us, options that may appear in the future. Now is not the time to balk at innovative solutions.
I understand that, for many, death is an uncomfortable subject, and disposition often an afterthought. If that’s true for you, I encourage you to reframe this problem as one about life — the lives of those of us for whom one badly timed death can send us into financial ruin and emotional turmoil, and the countless lives held within our world. Any step taken to help repair our environment should be one accessible to all.
