Green Last Requests, Part Two

  • Steve Dawson is an undertaker trying to give people greener options (Photo by Todd Melby)

When businesses begin offering
earth-friendly alternatives to
traditional products, it often
takes a while for those items
to catch on. The funeral industry
is no exception. Todd Melby reports
on one undertaker’s attempt at
greening death:

Todd Melby and Diane Richard produced a documentary on green burial called “Death’s Footprint.” You can listen to it here .

Transcript

When businesses begin offering
earth-friendly alternatives to
traditional products, it often
takes a while for those items
to catch on. The funeral industry
is no exception. Todd Melby reports
on one undertaker’s attempt at
greening death:

Steve Dawson is an undertaker who lives above his funeral home business.
His backyard looks like many here in suburban Chicago. It’s full of cherry
trees and apple trees and he’s got one of those round, above ground
swimming pools. Next to the pool, there’s a small building that looks like a
two-car garage.

We step inside.

“This is the crematorium. This is a cremation retort. As you can see it’s a
fairly large machine.”

That retort is a big furnace. It’s also a big part of Dawson’s business here at
Sax-Tiedeman Funeral Home.

Dawson: “We have a body that has been dropped off here for cremation. If
this is bothering you because we have a body here, I will do what I can to
get the body out of the way.”

Melby: “No, I’m fine.”

Dawson: “We’ll go back over here and get this started.”

(sound of the crematory furnace)

“That starts out the blowers, which is a purging blower, to basically clear
out anything that might be in the way there.”

After the furnace starts, it takes about two hours to finish the process. Then
Dawson takes the remains over to a machine that sifts through what’s left.

Dawson: “What we do is we go through there and sort through the
cremated remains.”

Melby: “This is actually what happens at the end, obviously.”

Dawson: “Right.”

Dawson collects all the prosthetics, those titanium knee and hip joints, in a big
can nearby. They get recycled.

That’s important to Dawson. At home, he’s a passionate recycler of soda pop
cans, newspapers and other household items.

“My family calls me the recycling Nazi because I get after them to put it all gets
put in the recyling bin.”

On the job, he tries to be green too.

Dawson knows that cremation — an option chosen by nearly 1 in 2 Americans —
has environmental downsides. Many older people have mercury dental fillings.
During cremation, that cancer-causing toxin vaporizes and goes up into the
atmosphere. Heating up the cremation furnace also eats up energy.

Dawson is also a savvy businessman. He believes more Americans are going
to want green choices, even when buying death products.

That’s why he’s embraced green burial. Sax-Tiedemann is Chicago’s first —
and so far only — green-certified funeral home. So in addition to selling
baseball-themed urns and big wooden caskets, Dawson has other choices
too.

“In this area here, we have rental caskets and up on the top, these are e-caskets,
Eco-caskets. These are made out of bamboo and these are designed to be
biodegradable.”

Although most Jews and Muslims skip embalming, the procedure is still quite
popular among Christians. Green death advocates are opposed to embalming
because of the formaldehyde used in the process. So to get certified, Dawson had
to buy a new machine.

“This is a three-body cooler. Inside a three-body cooler, this is what we use to be
able to hold remains without embalming. The temperature in the cooler is kept at
roughly 42 degrees. That’s enough to be able to slow down the decomposition
process.”

(funeral music)

A chilled body will hold for a day or so, which is usually enough time for friends
and family to gather and say good-bye. As baby boomers begin dying in big
numbers, Dawson expects more of them to choose green burial.

For The Environment Report, I’m Todd Melby.

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