Steve Ball’s grave was marked not by a granite headstone or marble mausoleum upon the burial of his cremated remains last year, but a flat rock chipped into the shape of a heart.

It came from his backyard in Pleasant Hills, where he kept bees and grew tobacco in the company of his wife, Heather, and two kids until his death in 2011.

“He was a nature guy,” said Heather Ball, 61, of Pittsburgh’s Deustchtown neighborhood. “I just couldn’t imagine Steve in a primitive rural cemetery … or something in the suburbs.”

That made Penn Forest Natural Burial Park, tucked along Plum Creek in Penn Hills, the right fit for the Ball family. They purchased a wooded lot to bury Steve, their dog Finn and, eventually, the whole family — no vaults, varnished caskets or synthetic clothing allowed.

Penn Forest is part of a small, but growing, class of environmentally-friendly cemeteries that skip the usual trappings of a burial to keep ecological disturbances to a minimum and allow for decomposition.

“If he could have designed a place for him to be after he died, he would have designed a place exactly like this,” Heather Ball said.

At the time of his death, green burial was only beginning to catch on as the “way to go,” as the staff at Penn Forest often joke.

From 2020 to 2023, the proportion of Choice Mutual insurance survey respondents who say they would prefer natural burial has jumped from 4% to 11%.

Cremation is the first choice for a plurality of Americans, with conventional burials on the decline.

Green burial isn’t just for nature lovers, according to Emily Miller, secretary for the Green Burial Council board. The nonprofit sets the standards for green burial sites, with a sister organization dedicated to outreach and education.

“A natural burial offers a reason to gather and have a funeral and ritual, even if you’re not religious,” Miller said. “People feel better about it when they have this idea about returning to the earth.”

What is a green burial?

Green burial is nothing new, even if its marketing has changed.

For centuries, Jewish and Islamic cemeteries have done interments without chemical preservatives or nonbiodegradable containers. Few of those cemeteries are certified with the Green Burial Council. In fact, the standard American burial only took on its modern, less natural features after the Civil War.

Rather, the certifications serve primarily as a “consumer messaging tool” as natural burials take on a green rebrand, Miller said.

To earn a hybrid certification — meant for sites with both green and conventional burial grounds — cemeteries must use biodegradable caskets and avoid vaults or toxic embalming fluids, such as formaldehyde.

Natural and conservation burial grounds also must complete an ecological assessment, limit the density of graves and minimize disturbances to the land.

The Green Burial Council has given its seal of approval to eight hybrid sites in the state, plus one natural burial site — Penn Forest. There are no certified conservation burial grounds in Pennsylvania.

At Penn Forest, bodies are buried about 4 feet deep, with another 18 inches of dirt mounded on top to keep animals out. The mound is removed after at least six months and replaced with a flat marker. Some families purchase engraved stones, but there is no requirement to do so. Graves are 4 feet by 8 feet, with 14 graves to a lot.

Ashes can be incorporated into some green burial practices, like a “treemation,” where a biodegradable urn is filled with cremated remains, a tree seed and nutrients.

Penn Forest has done more than 330 interments since opening in 2011, according to Laura Faessel, manager at Penn Forest. The 35-acre property, which includes 10 acres of wildlife preserve, could accommodate between 10,000 and 15,000 burials, she estimates.

Faessel of West Deer can name clients from Ohio, Washington, D.C., Florida and Colorado, most with some familial tie to Western Pennsylvania.

She said there has been an uptick in people purchasing plots since the onset of covid-19.

“I think it scared people into wanting to be prepared for their death,” Faessel said.

How green is green burial?

According to Miller, those traditional burials strain natural resources every step of the way. A metal casket, for example, must be mined, manufactured and transported. Embalming fluid, in particular, takes up a lot of shipping space.

“If you add up all of the things it takes to bury someone in the way this funeral industry is telling us is correct, it’s a huge footprint in terms of the emissions it took to build and manufacture that stuff,” Miller said.

Embalmers also face an eight times greater risk of blood cancers, and groundkeepers a doubled risk of contracting chronic obstructive pulmonary disease from chemical preservatives, which leech into the earth, according to the Green Burial Council.

Once buried, our bodies will return to the earth, according to Faessel. It’s just a matter of when.

“Even though it’s in a metal casket and a vault, decomposition still happens,” Faessel said. “A lot of people don’t realize that.”

For green burial, however, it’s not as simple as sticking a loved one under a tree and watching the tree grow. In fact, the decomposition process produces so much heat it could harm anything planted directly above the body, according to Miller.

In reality, multiple levels of microbes get to work converting a body’s tissues into nitrogen- or carbon-based nutrients that are diffused to all kinds of organisms, from lowly lichens to towering trees.

Is green burial the future?

With the rise of green burial, is it the end of the line for the traditional funerary industry?

Not quite, according to Adam Shaffer, assistant executive director of the Pennsylvania Funeral Directors Association.

“It’s more of a niche market,” Shaffer said. “I was at a pretty large funeral home, and we only had a couple families a year opt for this service.”

Hoffman Funeral Home and Cremation in Carlisle, where Shaffer worked for 17 years, is one of many funeral homes to offer green burial preparation as an ancillary service. In these cases, staff use nontoxic embalming fluids — or no preservatives at all — and wash the body with soap and water.

As for cemeteries, some have started green burial sections to attract business as conventional burials fall out of fashion.

But even Miller notes the cost and space savings associated with cremation. At Penn Forest, a lot and interment can cost about $5,000, not to mention any grave markers, shrouds or related expenses.

“(Green burial) is the lowest emissions thing you can do with your body, but it’s got practical challenges with geography and space,” Miller said.

Instead, she predicts alkaline hydrolysis will become the standard. This process reduces the body into inert liquid and bone fragments with around 10% of the energy needed for a flame cremation. The bone fragments can be ground to ash and returned to families.

Finding meaning

Susan Cox of Oakmont is like so many other green burial proponents: environmentally conscious and a little put off by the “hoopla” of conventional burials.

Beyond that, the 82-year-old, and her late husband, Paul, were early investors in Penn Forest. They would set up a table at community events to spread the gospel before Penn Forest had an acre to its name.

Paul Cox was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease around 2014. He died March 10, having long since lost his ability to speak, but his wishes were clear.

“My husband always wanted to be buried in a shroud. And I said, well, just a cardboard box is fine with me,” Cox said. “We would rather think of the bugs eating us.”

Environmental concerns, Choice Mutual data shows, aren’t necessarily the main driver of consumers shying away from conventional funerals.

Rather, Miller said, people tend to find solace in contributing to the natural world after death.

“Where something dies, something else will grow,” Miller said. “I think people are comforted by the idea that our body can be used to give life to something new.”

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