Mountaintop Removal & Green Burials, Part 1

Full steamshovel ahead for mountaintop removal.

This is The Environment Report. I’m Lester Graham.

The Obama administration has approved handing out as many as 42 new permits to mining companies for mountaintop removal coal mining in the Appalachians. Environmentalists are –uh—not happy. They say this is the most environmentally destructive kind of coal mining there is. It blows off the tops of mountains, fills in valleys, pollutes creeks and water supplies.

A lot of people expected the Environmental Protection Agency under the Obama administration to block new mountaintop removal mining. But the EPA has to follow the permitting process in place. If the Obama adminstration doesn’t want mountaintop removal it’ll have to change the rules EPA follows.

Oliver Bernstein is with the environmental group the Sierra Club.

:20 “The EPA is working as hard as they can, but they are operating under a fundamentally flawed legal framework around mountaintop removal and so the Obama administration will need to take the bold steps to enact the rulemakings that will help to end this process completely.”

Environmentalists are calling for the White House Council on Environmental Quality to step in and do whatever is necessary to stop the mountaintop removal coal mining.

(((STING)))

This is The Environment Report.

Memorial Day is coming up. Many people still visit the graves of family and friends… maybe bring flowers.

When a loved one dies, grieving prevents most of us from thinking about the environmental consequences of conventional funerals and burial. But some people are beginning to weigh the environmental costs of caskets, burial vaults and grave markers. Todd Melby reports on the green death movement.


STORY:

Amy Weik is a big-time environmentalist. She bikes to work, doesn’t eat meat, recycles and she composts.
AMY WEIK: This is my worm bin. It’s a rectangular cube, which I keep my worms in that eat my scrap vegetables. Mmm, look at that.
The environment is such a big part of Weik’s life, she’s not only interested in living green.

She wants to die green.
AMY WEIK: We’re Americans. We are wasteful and we consume.
We think that we are entitled to everything. So I’m entitled to using up this massive plot of land for the rest of eternity. That’s ridiculous thinking.

So 11 years ago — when she was only 23 — Weik wrote her own will and shared it with her mother.

AMY WEIK: I can read part of it.

AMY WEIK: Zero products or services from funeral homes are to be utilized.

Instead, Weik prefers her body to be chemically cremated. But that new, high-tech process isn’t widely available yet. Her second choice is to be composted with worms.

That second option leaves Weik’s mother — Linda Williams — confused.

LINDA WILLIAMS: The second was composed with worms? When I read it today, my first reaction was, oh my Gosh, she composts with worms in her kitchen. I hope she doesn’t expect me to put her in the box. (Laughs)

Weik sees lots of unnecessary waste in conventional burial practices. Caskets that are used for a short time and then go right into the ground. Most graveyards require the casket be placed inside a concrete burial vault. And cemeteries mow a lot and use fertilizer on the grass.

Green burial advocates prefer biodegradable caskets — or just a shroud — no burial vault, no grave markers and no landscaping.

Joe Sehee is head of the Green Burial Council.

JOE SEHEE: Most Americans do not know that you can have a funeral with a viewing without embalming. Most don’t know that burial vaults can be avoided.

The council has been slow to find graveyards willing to ban concrete burial vaults and minimize traditional landscaping.

That leaves Amy Weik wondering if she’s going to have rely on the worms in her compost bin to dispose of her body.