After life, a return to the earth

Conservation burials, green cemeteries, and environmental convictions are reshaping how some people think about death

By Michaela Haas

Dixieland band led the way. The musicians walked slowly down a mowed path through restored prairie; trumpet and clarinet cut through the late-afternoon air. Friends carried handmade prayer flags. Laughter mingled with song as the procession crossed the meadow. When it stopped, a violinist played “My Old Kentucky Home.” The family of the young woman, who was celebrated as an adventurous spirit and the “life of the party,” passed around a bottle of Kentucky bourbon, each taking a sip, then pouring some into the grave before helping shovel the soil back into place.

Amy Henricksen, a member of the Rotary Club of Mount Vernon in Ohio, remembers this ceremony vividly, not only because it was deeply personal but because it marked the first interment at Kokosing Nature Preserve, a conservation burial ground she helped create in the picturesque countryside near the small college town of Gambier. Here lie graves among native grasses, wetlands, and woodland. There are no elaborate headstones, no concrete vaults, no embalmed bodies. Over time, the land itself becomes the memorial.

Ceremonies like this one remain uncommon in Canada and the U.S., but interest is growing in conservation burial, a form of natural burial that restores and permanently protects the historic or native ecology of the land while returning the body directly to the earth. For some, the motivation is environmental. For others, it’s spiritual, cultural, or personal. For some Rotary members, the choice also reflects a lifelong commitment to stewardship and service.

From golf course to grassland

Though her background is in business and health administration, Henricksen was hired in 2013 by Kenyon College’s land trust to create a business plan for a conservation burial ground. She was drawn to the idea because she was already interested in green burial for herself. “I liked the idea of just going back to the earth,” she says with a smile.

Once a golf course, the Kokosing Nature Preserve opened in 2015, and 23 acres of restored prairie are designated for burial, with another 22 acres planted in native grasses and wildflowers for future expansion. Henricksen became its first steward and is now director of the land trust. She joined Rotary last year after past talks to the Mount Vernon club about her work.

When the Kokosing preserve opened, she recalls, many people did not realize that green burial was even an option. “They thought embalming and a cement vault were required by law. So we had to do a lot of educational outreach when we first began.”

Kokosing is certified at the highest level by the Green Burial Council, a designation that requires a legally binding, permanent conservation agreement, active restoration of the native habitat, and a perpetual care trust to ensure long-term land protection.

The distinction matters. A “green burial” can simply mean no embalming to preserve the body longer and a biodegradable casket or shroud, while conservation burial explicitly ties death care to land preservation.

“This is not just a cemetery,” Henricksen says. “It’s a conservation project.” This type of preservation takes the added steps of promoting healthy ecosystems with diverse plant life, animals, and insects. It safeguards culturally important landscapes for future generations to enjoy and prevents development to protect water sources, forests, fertile soil, and other natural resources, Henricksen explains.

She sees a clear parallel with Rotary’s environment area of focus. “You’re protecting land, restoring habitat, and helping people have meaningful conversations about death,” she says. “That feels very Rotary to me.”

What struck her in the beginning — and still does — is how physical and participatory these burials are. Families often carry the body, lower it into the ground, and shovel soil. The work is slow, deliberate, sometimes exhausting.

At Kokosing, one family buried an avid golfer after placing wooden golf tees on his casket, along with a hummingbird’s nest he had found shortly before he died. Others wrap their loved ones in handmade quilts.

“For a lot of people, that physical act is cathartic,” Henricksen says. “It’s working through grief.”

Reclaiming death from industry

Emphasis on family agency runs through the conservation burial movement.

Over the past century, death care in Canada and the U.S. has become increasingly professionalized. Embalming, sealed caskets, concrete vaults, and formal visitation hours became normalized, even though these practices are cultural conventions rather than requirements.

Conservation burials push back gently against that model. “We’re not pretending we’re doing anything other than returning someone to the earth,” Henricksen says. “There’s no need to hide the body, the process, or the reality of death.”

She has seen people who initially planned cremation change their minds after experiencing a conservation burial for a loved one. “They realize how meaningful it is,” she says. “And they want that for themselves.”

The modern conservation burial movement took root in the Appalachian Mountains. The Ramsey Creek Preserve in rural South Carolina opened in 1998 and later became the first certified conservation burial ground in the U.S.

Billy and Kimberley Campbell bought a dilapidated 33-acre farm with a goal to restore and preserve it. Their idea was radical in its simplicity: use burial fees to fund conservation.

The Campbells bury the dead or their ashes in biodegradable shrouds or plain wooden boxes, and they hand dig the graves. Like at the Kokosing preserve, they invite the families to participate as much as they want to. “Physical work is a good distraction when you’re stressed and grieving,” Kimberley Campbell says. A simple, flat natural stone chosen by the family marks each grave, blending seamlessly into the landscape.

Ramsey Creek Preserve sports no manicured lawns, but thriving woodland with oaks, birches, and maples . The Campbells ripped out kudzu vines and other invasives, nurtured native plants, and rewilded the land. In spring, sugar maples and mountain laurels color the hills pink. Bobcats, fox, deer, and even a blackbear roam the preserve.

The site served as a laboratory to develop best practices in conservation burials. The Campbells dislike the terms “natural” or “green” burial, because the definitions can vary and sometimes mask corporate greenwashing. The Campbells dismiss ideas like human composting, one newer alternative meant to reduce emissions by decomposing the body in a container with organic material. Some people who choose this method like its environmental benefits and that it leaves survivors with compost that they could spread like ashes from cremation. Other companies marketing themselves as sustainable death care businesses make burial suits and coffins infused with mushroom spores to speed decomposition.

The Campbells are convinced the investments in such ideas would be better spent protecting land. “The land is the burial suit,” says Billy Campbell, a medical doctor. He defines conservation burials as serving a higher conservation purpose. “We call it CPR for the land: conservation, preservation, restoration.”

People drawn to Ramsey Creek for conversation burials are as diverse as the land. Evangelicals, atheists, environmentalists, and traditionalists have chosen the preserve as their final resting place. Some want to support the site’s ecological mission, while others simply appreciate the serene setting or the lower cost compared with many conventional burial options. At the request of its clients, the preserve includes designated Jewish and Muslim areas and has had one Hindu burial.

What began as an experiment has inspired a movement. About 60 percent of Americans say they are interested in green burial options, according to a funeral industry survey.

The Campbells’ company, Memorial Ecosystems, advises people who wish to establish conservation burial grounds. In the early days, people traveled from as far as California to bury their loved ones at Ramsey Creek. Now the Campbells can direct them to the Conservation Burial Alliance, a nonprofit founded in 2016 that lists more than a dozen conservation burial sites across the country.

Other cemeteries designate areas of their grounds for more ecological options, like burials without a concrete vault. Throughout the U.S. and Canada, over 500 cemeteries offer green burials, nearly a fourfold increase from 2015.

Historically, families and communities were responsible for their own dead. As society evolved, death became a business, handled by professionals. The Campbells are encouraging families to reclaim their role in death care.

Globally, many cultures have long practiced simple, low-impact burials. Muslim and Jewish traditions, in particular, emphasize minimal intervention and respect for the body as part of a natural cycle.

In that sense, the green burial movement in the U.S. and Canada is less a radical departure than a rediscovery. “What we’re doing is not new but has been tried and true for thousands of years,” Billy Campbell emphasizes. “We have lost the skill of taking care of our dead. We gave that task away. And in doing so, we’ve become disconnected from death.”

At Ramsey Creek, those lessons are being rediscovered, and in the process, death is being rewilded — one burial at a time.

The environmental math of death

The environmental appeal is often what prompts people to explore greener burials. In some countries, a conventional burial typically includes embalming fluid containing formaldehyde, a steel or hardwood casket, and a reinforced concrete vault. Estimates cited by the Green Burial Council indicate that U.S. cemeteries bury millions of board feet of wood, millions of gallons of embalming fluids, and thousands of tons of concrete and steel every year.

Cremation, often assumed to be greener, has its own environmental footprint. Cremation chambers operate at temperatures near 1,900 degrees Fahrenheit and burn fossil fuels for several hours. According to some estimates, each fire cremation releases about 500 pounds of carbon dioxide, similar to driving an average gasoline car for about 650 miles, along with other contaminants down to the mercury in dental fillings.

For people who’ve spent considerable time thinking about environmental impact, the numbers can prompt reflection. Karen Kendrick-Hands, active in the Environmental Sustainability Rotary Action Group and a member of the Rotary Club of Madison, Wisconsin, describes herself as a “lifelong air-pollution watcher.”

Only recently, after a heart attack prompted reflection, did she connect those concerns to her own end-of-life plans. “I started wondering whether cremation really aligns with my values.”

Her perspective began to develop after her mother died in 1988. Kendrick-Hands declined embalming and chose a simple casket, with a small, private graveside service and later a church memorial. “My aunt was outraged,” she recalls. “She thought we were denying my mom a decent Christian burial. But there’s nothing inherently Christian about a fancy casket and a made-up body.”

She and her husband are considering Natural Path Sanctuary, a green burial ground outside Madison that supports a farm incubator and peace and justice initiatives. The process prompted her to consider training as a death doula, a professional who offers emotional and practical support to people and their families with the end-of-life process. “It’s really a gift to your family members to offer guidance, a respectful closure, and freeing them for the next step of the grief process,” she says. “Otherwise, they don’t know what you wanted.”

For Judith Black, of the Rotary Club of Marblehead Harbor, Massachusetts, conservation burial feels less like innovation than continuity. “This is how Jews have always buried our dead,” she says. “Dust to dust, earth to earth.”

Jewish traditions avoid embalming and favor simplicity: The body is washed, wrapped in a shroud of natural material, and buried in a plain pine or oak box, or directly in the ground.

Black recalls the recent burial of her husband’s son, who died at 45 and was buried at Eloise Woods Sustainable Natural Burial Park in Texas. “He was wrapped in a simple cotton shroud,” she says. “Those who loved him carried him. And then we all took turns shoveling soil.”

That physical act mattered. “You love this person. You’re saying goodbye. You put some muscle into it.” Black is seeking a green burial site. “I like the idea that a tree could grow out of you, its roots reaching down as you decompose.”

A spectrum of choices

About 6 in 10 Americans and even more Canadians — about three-quarters — are cremated, not least because that is often the more affordable choice. “Cremation is dominant,” confirms Rotarian Krystal Riddell, president of the Green Burial Society of Canada. “But when people start exploring the environmental implications, some begin to look for alternatives.”

If they don’t choose a green burial, some families scatter cremated remains in designated natural areas. Memorial parks are experimenting with wildflower meadows and reduced mowing.

And many traditional cemeteries now offer green burial sections. When Riddell founded her funeral home, Essentials Cremation and Burial Services, in the Niagara Region of Ontario nine years ago, a nearby cemetery was coincidentally opening its own green burial section, Willow’s Rest, a 2-acre space with wildflowers and trees. Riddell, a member of the Rotary Club of St. Catharines South, says green burial isn’t meant to replace conventional burials or cremation but rather to add an option for people who want a more environmentally conscious approach. “The most important message is that families today have a variety of meaningful death-care options, and each family should feel empowered to choose what best aligns with their values, culture, and needs.”

Her first green burial client was a woman with multiple chemical sensitivity. “Throughout her life, she struggled with fragrances and chemicals,” Riddell says. “Knowing that I could honor her wish of bringing her back to nature and she could be one with the earth again was so important to her.”

Riddell holds a monthly “Green Burial Café” online for anybody with questions about green burials. “Sometimes people are not mentally prepared to see a body in a shroud,” she has learned. “They expect to see a casket. But when people see how beautiful it can be, they’re embracing it.”

What stands out to her most is how people interact with these spaces. At Willow’s Rest, she has observed a woman who talks to the flowers at her daughter’s grave and feeds the squirrels. “Instead of just sitting there, looking at a stone, she’s talking to a living organism, which is just beautiful.”

Across the varied choices, one theme recurs: planning matters. “Someone who has had to bury a parent who didn’t have a plan,” Henricksen says, “often decides they want to give their children a gift by making those decisions ahead of time.”

That gift is clarity — about burial or cremation, about ceremony, about place.

For some Rotary members, conservation burial feels like a final expression of service: to family, to community, and to the land itself.

At the Kokosing preserve in Ohio, one family planted native sunflowers on their loved one’s grave. Each summer, the bright yellow patch grows tall, bending with the prairie grasses in the wind.

The bourbon has soaked into the soil.

The band has long since packed up and gone.

What remains is a grave that disappears into wildflowers — and land that will outlive us all.

This story originally appeared in the May 2026 issue of Rotary magazine.