The Chic Ecologist

Green Funerals and Eco Burials – A Renewal to the Earth

I had a discussion with my father awhile back about death and funeral arrangements. He surprised me with with a unique green burial unlike anything I had heard of before. I always imagined going out in a blaze of glory, similar to a Viking chieftains funeral; floated out to sea on a wooden boat and set ablaze. Not necessarily the greenest burial, but not as bad as the more traditional; embalmed in a hardwood casket and placed in a manicured lawn cemetery for all eternity. No, his was much more creative yet raw. He said “Put my body in a burlap sack and place me in the ground. Then plant the area with apple trees”. I wasn’t so sure about the apple trees, but it did raise a good point- why not just go a’la natural?

Each year, cemeteries across the US bury approximately:

• 30 million board feet (70,000 m³) of hardwoods (caskets)
• 90,272 tons of steel (caskets)
• 14,000 tons of steel (vaults)
• 2,700 tons of copper and bronze (caskets)
• 1,636,000 tons of reinforced concrete (vaults)
• 827,060 US gallons (3,130 m³) of embalming fluid

Cremation has been the main option for those seeking a more eco friendly burial, and those have become more efficient over the years. Of interest is the woodland burial movement, which started in the UK as a truly natural burial which also › Continue reading

Tags: biodegradable, green, Natural, nature, renewable resource

Green Building Design or Engineering Problems? Ask Nature

Looking for that muse to help you with your design? Whether its for a green building, an eco-friendly clothing line, your sustainable home products, environmental projects, or even for your army of robots, nature has your answer. Just about every joint, color scheme, support structure and pattern has been refined and perfected over billions of years. Asknature.org is a design solution for your designers block. With case studies and specific examples of biomechanics and form + function in action are available for you to search.

Imagine 3.8 billion years of design brilliance available for free, at the moment of creation, to any sustainability innovator in the world.

Imagine nature’s most elegant ideas organized by design and engineering function, so you can enter “filter salt from water” and see how mangroves, penguins, and shorebirds desalinate without fossil fuels.

Now imagine you can meet the people who have studied these organisms, and together you can create the next great bio-inspired solution.

- Asknature.org

Created by the founder of the Biomimicry Institute, Janine Benyus, AskNature is a free public resource that can be researched no matter what your challenge. If you are a biologist who wants to share your expertise, or a architect, engineer, chemist, designer, or just curious about planet-friendly and nature inspired solutions. The site is sponsored by Autodesk, the creators of AutoCAD desktop software, a key product to aid in design.

Examples of investigated solutions are how organisms in nature filter air and water, gather solar energy, repel water, and create non-toxic dyes and glues. The public domain library hopes using biomimicry strategies will help create the next generation of sustainable, efficient buildings, products and designs.

Tags: Architecture, Biomimicry, Building, Design, Engineering, Green Design, nature