Added to that was the environmental consideration. Modern cremators use the equivalent of 40 litres of petrol per corpse, on average – enough to drive from Sydney to Port Macquarie – while older cremators can consume twice that, according to 2011 estimates from the Department of the Environment and Energy. “It’s not that cremation of itself is one of the most massive polluters in our society,” Hartley says. “Motorcars, transport, planes would eclipse it, no problem at all – but when you think about it, it’s just a thing that we don’t need to do.”[...]
Cemeteries have long been preoccupied with the problem of space. There’s been talk of building skyward with multi-storey mausoleums and going subterranean with carpark-like catacombs; upright burials, feet first into deep graves, are on offer in Victoria’s Corangamite Shire. In a world-first trial at Rookwood, 120 pigs have been buried and exposed to additives in an experiment in speeding up decomposition in order to bury more human bodies in the same plots.[...]
Hartley wants the project to convey an optimistic message: the earth is surprisingly resilient. Decades from now, if all goes to plan, the pasture would be transformed by 20-metre tall eucalypts, including peppermints and snow gums, as well as tea trees, bottlebrushes, and acacias. People who want to be interred there would have their non-embalmed bodies placed in a biodegradable coffin or shroud and be buried at the minimum legal depth (90 centimetres in NSW) to promote natural decomposition. Native vegetation would then be planted on top and on another acre along Saumarez Creek. The idea is to restore a native wildlife corridor connecting Saumarez Ponds and Dangars Falls, a long-term goal of the Armidale Tree Group.
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