Money | green products Final 'Green' Frontier: Cemeteries Increasingly popular embalming- and casket-free option freaked locals out By Katherine Thompson Posted Jan 2, 2009 11:53 AM CST Copied Brad Frost of St. Michaels, Md., looks for a headstone to place a wreath in Arlington National Cemetery on Saturday, Dec. 13, 2008, in Arlington, Va. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf) As the green movement contemplates the afterlife, more funeral directors are seeing demand for a sendoff without the embalming and sturdy coffins of traditional burials, the Wall Street Journal reports. Natural burials won't necessarily put funeral directors out of business: Yes, simple shrouds are available, but so is a $300 "Himalayan rock salt" urn that "will dissolve within four hours when placed in water." In one Georgia community, the ick factor of the unconventional proved a stumbling block. Macon residents, squicked out at the unsubstantiated idea that decomposing bodies would contaminate the water supply, voted in November for a measure to require leak-proof coffins. But the movement has taken off elsewhere. Says the director of the Green Burial Council: "I get a lot of calls from people thinking it's a groovy alternative to opening a bed-and-breakfast." Read These Next Doctor left her Alaskan cruise and never returned. Trump "never heard" that "shylocks" is offensive. At least 13 people are dead in Texas flooding. Kyiv was subjected to 7 hours of 'terror.' Report an error