After you die, you’re usually not environmentally friendly. Here’s an alternative.

Feb. 06--When Jackie Wilson dies, she'll leave this world as she lived in it.

In her 76 years, the retired family doctor has hiked 125 miles of the Appalachian trial. She has sailed and ridden horses; camped and kayaked.

Four years ago, after she'd complained of blurred vision out of one eye, Wilson was told she had a rare and incurable form of Stage 4 lung cancer. The cancer, she also was told, had spread to her eyes, bones and liver.

It was then that Wilson decided her exit from this world would be in keeping with her values -- causing as little harm to the earth as possible.

"I drive an electric car. I eat organic. That's the kind of person I am," said Wilson, who alternates between living in Southern California and New Jersey.

"When I heard they embalm you with formaldehyde, and put you in a cement vault, and then they bury you in the ground on this manicured lawn with all kinds of toxic herbicides and weed killers -- I decided I couldn't be buried in that kind of situation."

Wilson is part of a growing world of people who are shunning conventional burials and even cremation -- disillusioned by the environmental impacts -- in favor of burials that are super earth-friendly, low-tech and cheaper.

For Wilson, the plan is simple: A hole will be dug. Her body will be placed in the hole. And the earth will be put back over her body.

Nature will take her from there.

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Burial -- at least, the kind of burial still favored by nearly half of all Americans -- is something of an environmental disaster.

The non-profit Green Burial Council estimates 64,500 tons of steel, 1.6 million tons of concrete and nearly 830,000 gallons of formaldehyde are buried in the U.S. each year. That's when taking into account a few key burial items -- embalming fluid, burial vaults and caskets. These numbers do not include the wood that is used to bury the dead or the heavy machinery used to dig graves or the fertilizers needed to keep the grave green for a few centuries.

Cremation, in turn, once viewed as the greener choice, increasingly is being shunned for similar reasons. The gases used (and created) by the process are carbon intensive, and the mercury that becomes air when dental fillings are burned is nothing less than toxic.

Enter so-called green burials. Some are as simple as Wilson's bury-the-body-in-a-hand-dug-hole plan. Others include simple pine boxes. Almost all involve using no machinery or chemicals or heat.

"As baby boomers are aging up, it's going to become more and more popular," said Caitlin Doughty, a Los Angeles-based mortician and self described "funeral industry rabble-rouser." Doughty's Undertaking LA, in Los Angeles, is one of three Southern California businesses designated as environmentally friendly by the Green Burial Council.

"I think there are a lot of families with environmental bents to their lives, people who consider themselves eco-conscious and know cremation isn't the best thing for the planet," Doughty said. "Cremation is not the magic pill for an environmentally friendly death."

Because more people like Wilson are choosing a more environmentally friendly farewell, the Green Burial Council has grown from one cemetery in 2005 to more than 400 green cemeteries and affiliated businesses, including companies that sell green burial services and related products, such as plant-based embalming fluid.

"It's really the people that chose this (form of burial) that drive it," said Kate Kalanick, the council's executive director. "Although we've consistently grown since 2005, the awareness and public interest went up exponentially in the last three years."

Still, for now, choices in Southern California are limited.

When Wilson looked for a green cemetery locally she found few options and eventually bought a plot in New Jersey. If she dies on the West Coast, her body will be put on ice and flown to Steelmantown Cemetery where her grave will be hand dug and marked only by a simple stone, if anything at all.

Ed Bixby, who owns and operates Wilson's future resting spot, Steelmantown, entered the funeral business by happenstance.

Before running Steelmantown, in Southern New Jersey, Bixby worked as a real estate broker and developer. But when he learned that the cemetery where his brother was buried had fallen into disrepair he decided to buy it. He kept the maple and oak trees and installed walking trails.

"I wasn't looking at it as a business opportunity. I was looking at it as 'someone needs to be responsible for this place.' I was looking for a new life for it," Bixby said.

"I learned about the natural burial movement myself," he added. "I wasn't an environmentalist, but of course I care about the environment. I wasn't a cemeterian, but of course I care about doing the right thing.

"I fit the bill and didn't know it."

Though the cost of real estate in Southern California is expensive, and available open space is dwindling, enthusiasm for green burials in California is growing.

In October Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law a bill that would allow for water-based cremation in California starting in 2020. The process uses less power and does not emit toxins into the atmosphere.

In July, Bixby acquired a green burial site with ocean views in Northern California.

Steve Morgan, the chief executive of land management company Wildlands Inc., is looking for open space in Southern California where he can open a green cemetery.

Morgan has been in land management for nearly 30 years but was led to green funerals in 2016. He now has three properties in various stages of the permitting process in Northern California, including Napa Valley, where land could otherwise be used commercially for grape cultivation.

"You're taking these landscapes that are very large and putting a permanent easement on (them)," Morgan said. "You're helping preserve that landscape from being converted into something else."

It's a concept that's increasingly resonating with Baby Boomers and Generation Xers, and is appealing to people across political lines.

"One of my favorite things about the green burial population is it brings together strange bedfellows," Doughty said. "Hippies and libertarians love it."

Maria Mendez, 54, and her husband Vito Micale, 58, of North Hollywood, are already planning for their green funerals. After a conversation with their 23-year-old son and a string of friends' funerals, the couple worked out a green death plan with Shari Wolf, one of two green-certified funeral service providers in Los Angeles County.

"Traditionally, my whole family has been embalmed and buried in a cemetery," Mendez said. "I didn't want the ground to have any of the chemicals involved in the embalming. Why would I preserve my body after it's gone?"

The couple isn't especially environmentally conscious, or spend much of their time outdoors. But they value environmental preservation.

"We're not over the top," Mendez said, "but this was important."

For Wilson, part of the appeal of her final resting place in New Jersey are the trails, which are used by hikers and horses, and the natural landscape. A former equestrian herself, Wilson's plot, near a lake, is surrounded by wild blueberry bushes, holly, pine, ferns and moss.

"It makes me feel satisfied," Wilson said. "I'm less anxious."

"I don't have to go down a path I don't believe in."

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