The 2008
Fall
Annual Meeting of the
Funeral Consumers Alliance of Western Massachusetts was held
Sunday,
October 26, 2008 at 2:00 p.m. in the Hotel
Northampton, Hampshire Room
Our
program topic was
Bringing
Green Burial to Western Massachusetts
Mark Harris, author of Grave Matters: A Journey through the Modern
Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial, presented "a
visual tour of this country's growing green burial movement."
Green burial, also called natural burial, is the most ecologically
friendly way of disposing of one's body after death. It is also more
traditional than the type of burial conventionally used today, as prior
to the 1860s bodies were buried without embalming, steel caskets or
concrete vaults.
The talk was followed by Q&A, a short business meeting, and
book signing.