Sun Jul 20, 02025, 5:30PM UTC
Regina Harrison
What is Green Burial?
What is the long-term future for burial practices? Come hear about sustainable alternatives to traditional burial and cremation. There is a small but growing movement away from toxic embalming, caskets built for forever, and even fossil fuel-intensive cremation. Methods like earth composting, water composting, and mycelial (mushroom) caskets are becoming part of the conversation. Join us as Long Now Boston explores ways we can positively affect the world we live in for future generations.
At Long Now Boston’s “What is Green Burial?” program on July 20, Michelle Hogle Acciavatti, founder of Vermont Forest Cemetery, along with Regina Harrison, director of sales at historic Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Watertown, addressed everything you’ve ever wondered about green, or natural, burial but were afraid to ask.
Regina Harrison
Regina Harrison is Director of Sales at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge/Watertown, Massachusetts, where she has worked in various roles for over 15 years. Her anthropology background is a key part of both serving families and thinking about how cemeteries can not only adapt to changing cultural trends but become positioned to lead them. As a birder and gardener she deeply appreciates how our cultural beliefs about death have led to the preservation of significant green spaces in urban environments.
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Michelle Hogle Acciavatti
Michelle Hogle Acciavatti is a natural deathcare worker and the founder of Vermont Forest Cemetery, the first natural burial ground in Vermont. She worked to fully legalize natural burial in Vermont and in addition to being a cemeterian, is a funeral director, death doula, pregnancy loss guide, home funeral guide, end of life specialist and natural burial educator. Her work has found her in settings as varied as the forest, Boston Children’s Hospital, The Vermont State House, and people’s own living rooms as well as the traditional funeral home.
Speakers
Event Summary
“A tasty snack for the earth!” is how Long Now Boston’s guest speaker Michelle Hogle Acciavatti refers to our bodies after death—an image at odds with the nutrient-depleted alkaline powder of cremains (cremated remains). Michelle is a trained neuroscientist and thanatologist (death specialist) who advocates for feeding our juicy bodies back to the planet that fed us throughout life. At Long Now Boston’s “What is Green Burial?” program July 20, Michelle, along with Regina Harrison, director of sales at historic Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Watertown, addressed everything you’ve ever wondered about green, or natural, burial but were afraid to ask.
After a short video about Michelle’s Vermont Forest Cemetery, which she created as the state’s first green/natural cemetery, Michelle “dug in” to the “ick factor.” In scientific terms, she explained how, unlike traditional burial that often seeks to delay decomposition with durable caskets and embalming agents, green burial removes barriers to decomposition, returning nutrients to the environment as quickly and cleanly as possible. That means using the body’s own gut biome to start the decomposition. It also means burying the body shallowly enough to be metabolized by mycorrhizae (the fungal networks that enable communication of nutrients to trees and plants).
Regina outlined the history of body disposition in the United States, where until the Civil War natural burial was typical. However, with dead soldiers needing to be transported long distances back to their families, the preservation technique of embalming became commonplace, and President Lincoln’s funeral train and fancy coffin kindled interest in ornate, durable “forever” caskets. In recent years cheap tombstones from India and China have come with high fossil fuel price tags. Regina said now, increasingly sustainable-minded customers are opting for local stone, numerical plaques, or even geolocated digital markers.
The Population Reference Bureau surmises that over seven percent of humans who have ever lived are alive today. That’s around 632 billion pounds of human bodies! Over 60% of Americans choose cremation, which, Michelle explained, is relatively cheap and space-efficient, but sends the ecosystem’s nutritious “tasty snack” up the chimney, creating negative externalities like fossil fuel consumption, CO2, chemical impurities, and heat.
The speakers answered questions ranging from whether animals can smell green burials and try to dig at them, to the celebrity fad of mushroom shrouds (they can introduce non-native fungi that then throw off the native fungi balance), to the timelines for decomposition, to natural organic reduction (NOR, a.k.a. accelerated human composting), and alkaline hydrolysis (water composting), to the regulatory frameworks, to relative costs, both in money and environmental toll.
The biggest takeaway was that, in the Long Now spirit of being better ancestors, what we do with our corpses will have a significant effect on the planet we leave behind. With informed planning, the decision can be active and meaningful, rather than merely an administrative afterthought.