6 Funeral Trends That Are Changing Death Rituals

Traditional funerals are on their death bed. More people are skipping the two days of visitation, religious service and burial of an embalmed body in a casket that can cost as much as a used car, and instead opting for funerals that are easier on the planet and the budget. They’re going for more personal rituals, too, that break the rigid customs that became the norm in the 20th century. Here’s a look at what’s out there.

Cremation

Cremation has become the new normal. Last year, cremation surpassed traditional burial for the first time in the United States. That’s a huge milestone and marks a sea change in funeral traditions. In 1970, just 5 percent of people opted for cremation. This year, about 55 percent of those who die will be cremated, says the Cremation Association of North America, and by 2030, that number is predicted to rise to 71 percent. The main reason people are being burned instead of embalmed? Cremation is a lot cheaper, costing a third as much as a regular burial. It also saves natural resources, like land for a burial, and wood or steel for a coffin.

Water Cremation

The next wave in cremation is a process called alkaline hydrolysis, a.k.a. liquefying a body. It works like this: The corpse is put in a vat of solution that dissolves everything but the bones, which are crushed into ashes and returned to the family. It’s a more eco-friendly process than flame cremation, which spews as much carbon dioxide into the air as a 600-mile drive. Alkaline hydrolysis is legal in 15 states, and so new that there aren’t statistics available for how many people are choosing it. It’s comparable in cost to a regular cremation.

Green Burial

This trend of the 21st century is straight out of the 19th century: Green burials, in which an unembalmed corpse is placed into a biodegradable container and buried directly in the ground. Nature does the rest. Its growing popularity is driven by concern about the environmental impact of burying corpses pumped with toxic embalming fluids, and a desire to cut the massive amount of natural resources used in traditional burials. Green burial is better for the budget, too, costing less than half as much as a traditional funeral. “It’s a return to the simple funeral customs that used to be common,” says Kate Kalanick, executive director of the board of the Green Burial Council. The GBC doesn’t keep stats on how many green burials are happening in the U.S., but Kalanick says they’ve seen their list of green burial providers grow from just one when they launched in 2005 to more than 400 this year.