If you want an unusual urn, Funky Funerals is a good place to start looking. Their prices start at $227 for biodegradable urns like those pictured below.

Green funerals are environmentally friendly because they cut down the resources for a funeral – no irreplaceable hardwood trees have to be felled and transported thousands of miles.

The casket materials are biodegradable, cheap and have low carbon foot-prints. Environmentally friendly coffins are available in all sorts of recyclable materials like cardboard and papier mache. Many cardboard coffins are brightly colored or even futuristic pod- shapes (See below).

Basic cardboard coffins start from £85 plus delivery from many firms on the internet – just search Google for ‘eco funerals’ or green funeral’ for a list. All the coffins pictured to the right are reinforced cardboard that is weight-tested and overprinted with different designs.

Some enterprising firms also provide coffin covers – traditional wooden ‘outers’ that can have a cardboard coffin slipped inside for a religious service.

The coffin is then pulled out for burial or cremation, and the wooden outer cover is re-used again for subsequent funerals.

Wicked wickerwork

If wooden or cardboard coffins don’t hit the spot – another option is a woven natural casket.

Materials range from wicker, banana leaves, hyacinth leaves to jute and seagrass. The coffins cost between £400 – £550 depending on the material and the supplier. Natural material coffins are available to order online from many stockists.

Creative coffins

UK firm Vic Fearn Ltd are right out there with custom coffin designs.
The egg was for a woman who wanted a cremation in the foetal position. The egg was handcrafted from elm.

The skip was a for a builder who felt the most appropriate way to go was literally out with the rubbish. Other custom designs include guitars, ballet shoes and foot- ball boots.

Shrouded in mystery

The simplest funeral is wrapping the body in a burial shroud. Many styles and designs are available, from a plain white linen shroud to multicolored patterns. Shrouds are available mail order online.

The most common type of funeral for a shroud is a woodland burial or a green funeral. Contrary to what the picture shows, shrouded bodies are not left in the open, but buried in the earth. Often a tree is planted on the grave as a memorial instead of a headstone.

Urning Your Last Resting Place

Urns to hold your ashes after cremation are available in all sorts of shapes, sizes and colors. The designs and options are almost endless – from biodegradable to one-off works of art.

Don’t forget you can always make your own container or use something that has sentimental value. As mentioned earlier in the book, ashes are sterile, so no health issues are involved.

If you want an unusual urn, Funky Funerals is a good place to start looking. Their prices start at $227 for biodegradable urns like those pictured below.

Lights out, camera, action!

Hollywood celebrity author Lynn Isenberg has started a new funeral event company on the back of her novel ‘The Funeral Planner’.

While researching the book, she realized there was a big market for staging life celebrations at funerals, so put together a team of professional directors, writers and actors to bring the deceased almost back-to-life for the mourners.

The team research and stage landmarks from the dead person’s life at a party after the funeral.
Her company Lights Out Enterprises presents live shows or makes short movies about the deceased.

True story – Two London sisters have kept their dead mother on ice at a funeral parlour for 10 years so they can pay weekend visits. Keeping their mother has cost the sisters £13,0000 in storage fees, £800 on make-up and £2,000 on five wooden cof- fins. Four have rotted over the years. The mother died aged 84 of an embolism in 1998.

Plans for building your own coffin are available from the internet – at the eco site Mother Earth News.

Full instructions for construction , including the best woods to use, are on the site. The cost depends on how much you pay for the materials and if you hire a carpen- ter.

Tip – The secret to building a correctly sized coffin is mak- ing the casket four inches wider than the deceased’s shoul- der span and five inches longer than their standing height.

Here is a list of the most popular ways of effectively and sensitively dealing with the problem:

Air scattering

Ashes are cast from a private plane. Some firms will arrange your ceremony to fly over a specified place at the time you want. On clear days, the ash cloud is visible from the ground.

True story: A deceased man’s colleague was a private pilot. After a farewell ceremony on the ground, two friends took him for a last flight over the Essex countryside. At 2000 feet, the window was opened and his ashes were tossed into the slipstream…where some attached themselves to the fuselage and the rest blew into the backseat. His final resting place was a vacuum cleaner.

Casting

Casting is simply an individual or a group gathering in one place and throwing the ashes in to the wind. One or all of the people can take part. Just make sure you stand upwind and throw the ashes downwind so they don’t blow back.

Green Burial

Burying ashes makes a shrine for your friends and loved ones to visit for contemplation and remembrance. Ashes can be poured in to a hole or placed in an urn and buried. The spot can be marked by a headstone, memorial or even by planting a tree.

Raking

Ashes are scattered on loose soil and raked into the ground, at the conclusion of the scattering ceremony. Many cemeteries and crematorium have scattering gardens.

Trenching

Trenching is popular on beaches. With a small hoe, dig a shallow trench in the sand. Many people write the deceased’s name. Pour in the ashes, and if it’s a windy day, mix in a small amount of wet sand to hold the ashes in the trench. When the tide turns, the ashes will be washed out to sea.

Water scattering

For people who want their ashes scattered at sea, water scattering urns, shells and pillows are special urns that float and gradually melt in to the waters gently releasing ashes as they dissolve. Several models of water scattering urns and pillows are available from Cremations Solutions.

Is it legal to just scatter ashes?

The answer is yes, with a few exceptions. In the UK, ashes may be scattered anywhere – providing you have permission if the land is private and beware of water scattering in the North Sea as European Community laws govern what can be put in to the water.

Other points to consider for scattering

• Don’t spread ashes upstream of a drinking water supply;
• Don’t spread ashes in water used for commercial activity or recreation
• If you are on a bridge – watch out for people in boats passing beneath
• Don’t scatter in windy weather or close to buildings to avoid the ashes being blown over others
• Don’t bury or scatter non-biodegradable materials

The bullet points are sensible precautions as well in the US. You should always check before scattering ashes in the US as many states and authorities, such as parks, have special regulations that limit or prohibit the spreading of ashes.