The Green Burial Movement

This week's edition of grist.org's Main Dish tackles an uncomfortable subject -- how to carry your environmental principles over to the afterlife. It profiles Joe Sehee, the executive director of bizarrely yet accurately named Green Burial Council.

"There's a cultural barrier to green burial in mainstream culture," says Kim Sorvig, a landscape architect at the University of New Mexico who serves as an advisor to the Green Burial Council. "We have a detachment or denial about people dying. You can go your entire life and never be confronted with the actual facts of death."

It's something we all prefer not to think about, but Sehee makes a great case that properly planning out your burial can make a real contribution to the environment, both by avoiding the toxic materials usually involved, and by directing the funds to organizations concerned with conservation.

Too creepy for a Thursday morning? OK, read this instead.