ArticlePublisher preview available

Environmental impact of Funerals. Life cycle assessments of activities after life.

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment

May 2017
22(5)

DOI:10.1007/s11367-016-1183-9

Authors:

Elisabeth Keijzer

Blonk

Purpose Although the funeral market is propagating new ‘green’ alternatives and exploring innovative techniques like resomation, very little is known about the environmental impact of funerals. This research aimed to develop a benchmark of funerals, by quantifying the environmental impacts of the most common funeral techniques, i.e. burial and cremation, by identifying where the main impacts originate from and by comparing these impacts to impacts of other activities during a person’s life. Methods The environmental impacts of funerals were analysed by means of a life cycle assessment (LCA), based on Dutch company information, literature and expert judgements. The results were analysed per impact category but also on an aggregated level by means of shadow prices. Two sensitivity analyses were performed: one examined the high impact of cotton in funeral coffins; the other checked the results by means of another weighting method. Results and discussion The results showed no significant difference between the two funeral techniques in five impact categories. Burial has the lowest impact in more than half of the categories, but its impact is many times higher in the two most differing categories than for cremation. The total shadow price of burial is about 30 % higher than the shadow price of cremation, but the main cause for this difference is a highly debated category, namely land use. If the results would be considered without the shadow prices of land impact categories, burial would score 25 % lower than cremation. These results are representing average practise and may deviate on certain aspects for other countries, but as a starting point for further studies, this benchmark is well applicable. Conclusions and recommendations This study delivered an environmental benchmark of funerals and insights in the impacts of the individual processes, which can be used in further assessment of ’green’ funeral options. The benchmark results show that the environmental impact of funerals is largely determined by secondary processes and that the total impact can be quite small in comparison to other human activities. Besides these environmental insights, it is important to take into account social, cultural, climatic, local, economical and ethical arguments before changing policies or giving recommendations.

System boundaries and process steps. The process steps preceding the burial or cremation are only included if they are specific for the funeral technique (e.g. digging) and if they influence the impacts of the funeral technique (e.g. the coffin is also buried and incinerated). In all process steps, raw material winning, production, transport and, in case of machines, end of life after the service life period, are included. The process steps are described in Sect. 3 of this paper

…

Comparison of the environmental impacts of burial and cremation of one average deceased person in the Netherlands. Cremation impacts are offset against the burial impacts, which are set at 100 %. The y-axis is cut-off at −200 and +300 %, but the boxes indicate that cremation scores beyond this limit in two impact categories: HTP −20,033 % and MAETP 684 %

…

Comparison of the aggregated environmental impacts of burial and cremation of one average deceased person in the Netherlands. The environmental impacts are aggregated by means of shadow prices (see Table 1). The categories MAETP, MD and FD are not shown because their shadow price is 0€/unit

…

Sensitivity analysis; comparison of the minimum and maximum scenarios of the aggregated environmental impacts of burial and cremation of one average deceased person in the Netherlands. In the burial scenarios, the length of the grave rest period and its associated processes is varied. In the cremation scenarios, the gas consumption is varied

…

Sensitivity analysis; comparison of the aggregated environmental impacts of burial and cremation of one average deceased person in the Netherlands with the ReCiPe Endpoint method instead of the shadow price weighting method as shown in . The category MAETP is not shown because it is not included, as explained in Sect. 2.1

…

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LCA OF WASTE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

The environmental impact of activities after life: life cycle

assessment of funerals

Elisabeth Keijzer

Received: 23 August 2015 /Accepted: 5 August 2016 / Published online: 16 September 2016

#Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2016

Abstract

Purpose Although the funeral market is propagating new

‘green’alternatives and exploring innovative techniques like

resomation, very little is known about the environmental im-

pact of funerals. This research aimed to develop a benchmark

of funerals, by quantifying the environmental impacts of the

most common funeral techniques, i.e. burial and cremation, by

identifying where the main impacts originate from and by

comparing these impacts to impacts of other activities during

aperson’s life.

Methods The environmental impacts of funerals were

analysed by means of a life cycle assessment (LCA), based

on Dutch company information, literature and expert judge-

ments. The results were analysed per impact category but also

on an aggregated level by means of shadow prices. Two sen-

sitivity analyses were performed: one examined the high im-

pact of cotton in funeral coffins; the other checked the results

by means of another weighting method.

Results and discussion The results showed no significant dif-

ference between the two funeral techniques in five impact

categories. Burial has the lowest impact in more than half of

the categories, but its impact is many times higher in the two

most differing categories than for cremation. The total shadow

price of burial is about 30 % higher than the shadow price of

cremation, but the main cause for this difference is a highly

debated category, namely land use. If the results would be

considered without the shadow prices of land impact catego-

ries, burial would score 25 % lower than cremation. These

results are representing average practise and may deviate on

certain aspects for other countries, but as a starting point for

further studies, this benchmark is well applicable.

Conclusions and recommendations This study delivered an

environmental benchmark of funerals and insights in the im-

pacts of the individual processes, which can be used in further

assessment of ’green’funeral options. The benchmark results

show that the environmental impact of funerals is largely de-

termined by secondary processes and that the total impact can

be quite small in comparison to other human activities.

Besides these environmental insights, it is important to take

into account social, cultural, climatic, local, economical and

ethical arguments before changing policies or giving

recommendations.

Keywords Burial .Cremation .Environmental impacts .

Funerals .LCA

1 Introduction

Humans carry out many activities during their lifetime which

influence the world’s environment (e.g. UNEP 2011)and

many of these activities have been subject of environmental

research (e.g. see Feifel et al. 2010). Very little is known,

however, about the environmental impact of post-mortem ac-

tivities: the disposal of human remains. Isolated issues have

been discussed, like the emissions of crematoria (Elzenga

1996; Santarsiero et al. 2005), the potential groundwater pol-

lution of cemeteries (van Haaren, 1951; Brinkmann et al.

1987;Dent2002; Spongberg and Becks, 2000a and 2000b;

Trick et al. 2005) and the decomposition process in the soil

Responsible editor: Adriana Del Borghi

Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article

(doi:10.1007/s11367-016-1183-9) contains supplementary material,

which is available to authorized users.

*Elisabeth Keijzer

elisabeth.keijzer@tno.nl

TNO, Post box 80015, 3508TA Utrecht, The Netherlands

Int J Life Cycle Assess (2017) 22:715–730

DOI 10.1007/s11367-016-1183-9

Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.

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