Those who are environmentally conscience will be very pleased to hear about how to participate in eco-friendly burials. Making a funeral "green" takes us back to the old fashioned way of burying the deceased.

Click Funeral Homes in Lenoir City and Farragut conduct eco-friendly burials. Click is the first certified funeral home through the Green Burial Council, a nonprofit organization that promotes environmentally conscious burial practices. The director, Larry Click, remembers how funerals used to be done by digging graves by hand with a shovel.

Larry Click stated, "I think this really is just going back to the way we used to do things. I've been in a funeral home my whole life. Used to, when somebody would pass away we'd go put a tent up in the cemetery because people were digging graves by hand. My daddy told me that when we first started, the cloth-covered caskets were all they had back then."

Being an eco-friendly funeral home means that customers are offered several options as to how they would like their loved ones to be buried. Bodies can be refrigerated, embalming is non-toxic, and caskets are of recyclable materials.

An environmentally friendly burial includes putting a covered body directly into the ground from the hospital. The ceremony performed is more traditional using eco-friendly products such as wood coffins, made without any type of finish that would hurt the environment. Guest books and note cards are made from recycled paper and natural body washes are used as an alternative to embalming.

Written by Dr. KC Kelly