Up in smoke or down with worms? older adult environmentalist’s discourse on disposal, dispersal, and (green) burial

ABSTRACT

Environmentalists target their own behaviour choices as part of their identity, including recycling, transportation, and clothing. Based on interviews with older adult environmentalists, we investigate whether their environmentalism extends beyond their lives. That is, do they want to be disposed of or dispersed upon their death? In terms of environmentalism, then, considering the materials involved, including one’s body, how might we explain older adult environmentalists’ thoughts on their own death care? Is there a gap between one’s identity as an environmentalist and one’s anticipated choices about death care? We examine the death care discourse of 20 older adult environmentalists to examine Rumble et al.’s 2014 debate between disposal and dispersal. We conclude that environmental activists maintain their identity as environmental activists through their death care deliberations, but that both the ecological science of burial choices and the knowledge about green burial options is evolving.

KEYWORDS:

• Green burial
• environmentalists
• environmental evaporation
• attitudes towards death/burial/cremation
• earth care
• disposal
• dispersal
• discourse

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the activists that we interviewed for sharing their time and stories.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The majority of this paper was conceived, researched, and written prior to the global pandemic of 2019–2020 that upended so many traditions and practices around death, burial and grieving.

2. Cryonic suspension would seem to be a problematic death care choice environmentally. While unmentioned by anyone in our study, the freezing (of all or part of one’s dead body in the hopes of the emergence of technology capable of reanimating one back to life) of their body via the interminable maintenance and surveillance might consist of a large carbon footprint (Shoffstall, 2010).

3. It should be noted that some are looking to offer renewable energy credits to crematoria while admitting that the idea examines ‘the morbid topic of the use of the human body past its expiration date’ (Michalska, 2018, p. 990).

4. In the United States those with a ‘Mayflower connection’ claim esteem as connected to some of the original colonising families.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Paul V. Stock

Paul V. Stock. Paul is an environmental and rural sociologist with a primary interest in how people ethically engage with the planet. With much of his work focused on farmers he is co-author of New Farmers with Tim Hossler and D. Bryon Darby (P&T Committee, 2019) and The Good Farmer with Rob Burton, Jérémie Forney and Lee-Ann Sutherland (Earthscan, 2020).

Mary Kate Dennis

Mary Kate Dennis. Mary Kate is an Assistant Professor in the Master of Social Work based in Indigenous Knowledges (MSW-IK) Program at the University of Manitoba. Her work focuses primarily on Indigenous elders’ well-being and ways of caring related their families their communities, their land and the environment - particularly conceptualising loss and grief and methods of recovery.