TORONTO - Cycling to work, using energy-efficient appliances and light bulbs, eating organic food -- Canadians are trying harder these days to be conscientious consumers.
But amid all this green living, just how green a legacy will we leave in death?
When pondering the spectre of death, generally the environmental impact of one's burial is not top of mind. But several companies and groups in Canada are banking on the hope that it soon will be.
Few people realize the harm traditional burials, and even cremations, do to the environment, says Caley Ferguson, vice-president of Northern Casket.
Ferguson displayed his company's nature-friendly "Enviro-Casket" line at the Green Living Show in Toronto over the weekend.
He says, "It's sort of one last way to thank Mother Nature."
Traditional caskets use metal hinges and fastenings, several layers of varnish and lacquer, and fancy fabrics for the interior - all of which are left in the earth to seep into groundwater once the body and wood decompose.
And with cremation, those materials - right down to the mercury in dental fillings - are burned up into the atmosphere. The process of cremation itself is not very energy-efficient, with mass amounts of fuel needed to burn a body at high temperatures for a considerable length of time.
Enviro-Caskets use wooden hinges and braces, undyed and unbleached cotton fabric and are finished with either natural walnut oil or beeswax. All the products used will completely degrade in 30 to 60 years.
"They're not going to be leaving anything behind once they're dead and gone," Ferguson says.
"(The environment) is a huge issue and it's on the front of a lot of people's minds now, so we're trying to offer a product that suits those people."
Mark Rogowski, 46, who brown-bagged his lunch for the day at the show, was drawn to Northern Casket's display. He says his mother, who is 86 years old, would like something simple and natural as a final send-off.
"We're quite environmentally conscious and something like this really intrigued me," he said. "I don't want to sound morbid and that, but we're all eventually going to die."
The neighbouring booth at the consumer show takes it one step further. A natural casket is all well and good, but who really needs a casket anyway? Or a cemetery for that matter?
"Instead of (using) an embalming fluid and being put in big caskets, what we're hoping to do is for people to have a choice to be wrapped in a biodegradable shroud or put in a pine box and into the ground, and to create a park as opposed to the cemeteries," says Janet McCausland, executive director of the Natural Burial Association.
According to the association, there are more than 200 natural burial sites in the United Kingdom and five in the United States, and it hopes to bring the concept to Canada.
"We want to create a park that's friendly, that's spiritual, where people will go visit their loved ones and have nature around them," says McCausland.
Bodies buried in the ground must be marked, so instead of tombstones, such sites would be marked with a tree or stones embedded flat in the ground.
Thinking about death and burial in a greener context is something that resonates with Crystal Rank, who, at just 32 years old, already knows she wants to leave the planet as clean as she can for her children.
"I had no idea that our traditional burial had so many negative effects on the environment, so I just think this is such a great way to go," she says.
"I love the idea of when you die you get put into the earth and just recycle naturally."
