By Jackie Storer
According to the great American communicator Benjamin Franklin, in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes. And once we shuffled off this mortal coil, we could usually expect an even more predictable send off - usually involving a wooden coffin, a church service, burial or cremation. But, it seems, times are a changing. With the focus on climate change and how we can all do our bit to save the planet, people are thinking more seriously about how their actions impact on the environment - even after death.
Each year an estimated 600,000 funerals take place in the UK - with more than 400,000 of them involving the cremation of a conventional wooden coffin, which means all sorts of pollutants, such as carbon dioxide, contaminating the atmosphere. The alternative has always been a burial, together with a traditional headstone - but a shortage of cemetery spaces has forced some local authorities to have to consider the possibility of reburying corpses and placing new graves on top.
In more recent years, an increasing number of people have been opting for a "greener" way of saying goodbye, together with a ceremony that better reflects the individual they have lost. This has resulted in the growth of natural burial sites - there are now around 200 in the UK - plus a choice of wicker, cardboard and sustainable wooden coffins - some featuring photos, pictures and colourful designs - and other types of non-religious or humanist services.
For Richard Bradshaw's terminally ill wife Sarah, the idea of a boring wooden casket and the normal "macabre ceremonial of a funeral" was not an option. Instead, the 39-year-old HR advisor chose to design her own coffin, featuring everyone and everything she adored, and have a service filled with laughter and memories of the fun-loving woman she was.
The result was an unpolished, soft wooden casket with rope handles, covered in pictures of chocolate mini-eggs, photos of her family and their black cat Rocky, a passionflower from the garden, and cards that her son Ben, now 14, and daughter Ailish, now 12, had written, saying 'I love you Mummy'.
While her funeral, which attracted 200 mourners, was held in a traditional Ipswich church, the service was more a celebration of Sarah's life, with her interment at the natural Greenwood burial site close to the Suffolk coast.
"Like a lot of people over the last 10 years, we became more aware of the situation with global warming," said Richard, 45, a manager on the performance team at Job Centre Plus in Ipswich.
"When we were considering Sarah's send off, it was important to us to limit the impact of our choice on the environment. It wasn't that we were ever militant about it, but we always tried to do our bit, by driving only one car and remembering to reuse our carrier bags at the supermarket.
"For Sarah, even in the planning of her own death, it was important to her that we did something that was natural."
Initially, the mother-of-two, who died on September 14, 2008 - following a battle with Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma and then Acute Myeloid Leukaemia - considered having a wicker coffin. But then she came across Mary Tomes at Colourful Coffins, which specialises in bespoke picture coffin designs printed on biodegradable paper or material wraps using eco-friendly inks.
Mary and her husband Kevin, who is also the company's chief designer, plant a tree each time one of their coffins is buried, creating a woodland area just outside their Oxford base, boasting over 5,000 trees - including English oaks and beeches, and which attracts foxes, deer and badgers. For each coffin that is cremated, the company offsets 215kg of CO2 through an agreement with carbon offsetting organisation Climate Care. Colourful Coffins says the scheme is likely to result in 250 tonnes of CO2 being offset in 2009.
"Sarah was completely sold on the idea," said Richard. "When she told me, I thought it was great. It made me smile because it was so typical of Sarah to be so out there and so radical. Colourful Coffins has since introduced a recycled cardboard range and I am sure if that had been available then, Sarah would have gone for that instead.
"When it came to her funeral, she opted for a burial because she thought it was part of the natural cycle of life in that the body gets recycled into the ground and has less of an impact on the environment.
"The burial ground is an area of woodland that looks particularly beautiful with blossom on the trees. You are only allowed a small wooden plaque with the person's name, date of birth and death, so it is all very low key. Sarah's grave looks particularly pretty because it is covered in Narcissi that were planted by a friend. We live near a traditional cemetery with lots of stone and metal and the whole environment is completely different - it is all very sombre and artificial.
"Now, if we are going to the coast, we will drop in to see Sarah's grave in the woodland. It's a much nicer place to go."
Richard says he also believes planning the funeral and the details on the coffin helped the children come to terms with their mother's death.
"It made what was going to happen real for them and it enabled them to feel involved in the process," he said. "It helped them understand that Sarah's dying was not going to be the end of everything. They could feel confident that they could carry on with their lives and not go round with their heads down.
"For me, and I'm sure it would be for a lot of other people, if you are able to face up to do something like this, it is an enormous help. It gives you something to focus on - a hook to hang all your thoughts about preparing for the death and funeral. After all, why should we do everything in the way convention dictates? Why not celebrate this person's life?"
