There’s something we are not talking about when it comes to green burials.

Sure, they reduce the environmental impact of burial rituals and practices. From composting the deceased into quality soil, to using water-powered cremation to reduce casket materials, we love an eco-friendly option to extend our legacy that doesn’t cause more damage to the planet than our decades of over-consumption. (Although I have to say, PFOS got the last laugh on us there.)

Industry leaders in the death space are partnering closely with governments and communities to solve how we may reduce the environmental impact of burials, in an increasingly large global effort to address the challenges of climate change. However, from what researchers can tally, they still require a stunning amount of natural resources like water, land and enough wood to build almost 1,900 homes a year (Lyons, 2020). They’re still using chemicals that can harm the environment, and produce large amounts of CO₂ into the atmosphere (Forstmann, et al, 2023).

These are, of-course, the industrialized solutions. Green burial rituals existed long before humanity shifted its focus on offsetting the man-made environmental impacts on the climate. Islamic burial practices are inherently green, as they forgo caskets for bio-degradable burial shrouds, without chemical preservation practices (Osolase, et al., 2022). Tibetan Buddhists have used Sky burials, a method of allowing large carrion to dispose of the dead, in a practice to demonstrate a value system of reincarnation, impermanence, compassion and non-attachment (Shank, 2019). And countless Indigenous communities around the globe have found ways to dispose of their deceased with minimal land disturbance.

This treasure trove of burial optionality motivates activist groups and non-profit organizations to advocate for environmentally forward innovation, other experts proactively caution these groups to consider how this advocacy work opens extractive capitalist interest into an already vulnerable space. In 2024, the Green Funeral Services market was valued at $622M and is expected to grow to $1.08B by 2030 (Virtue Market Research, 2025).

Experts also have identified that while globally available, Western countries own the lion's share of the green burial market. They also own a disproportionate share of the responsibility for climate change and have emitted over half of all CO₂ since 1850 (Evans, 2021). And despite having copious interactions with Indigenous communities throughout this time, Western ideologies persistently prioritize the needs of their own shared economic and cultural ambitions while coercing Indigenous communities to abandon cultural green practices and assimilate (Roka, 2012). For example, in Canada, the discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves at former residential school cemeteries illustrates how colonial violence not only erased Indigenous lives but disrupted burial traditions themselves (Heidenreich, 2021.)

This is not an isolated wound — it is part of a broader pattern where colonialism interrupts or erases environmentally assistive practices and replaces them with extractive, assimilationist systems. Thinking systematically, the solution to impactful intervention then feels clear: assimilation is the point in the process where sustainable cultural behaviors become lost or disappear entirely. And while we, the children of blood thirsty, murderous ancestors, can not travel back in time and undo the process, we sure as fuck can name the process before we jump into a mushroom capsule, six feet under the ground, and feel good about our legacy.

After all, despite what our favorite history teachers implored us to recognize in high school, we all jumped ten toes down into the promises of capitalism — a modern model of colonialism that continues to prioritize racial hierarchies and Eurocentrism. And our cosign to belong, with a beanie baby, or Laboubou in tote, we also both changed the global climate at scale, while ignoring the communities, like those in Canada, to witness the loss of our own ability to maintain sustainable practices (Quijano, 2000).

Westernization is a global economic structure that won’t easily dismantle itself overnight; every interaction, from getting dressed to eating dinner becomes an exchange between the individual and their own environmental impact on nature, with limited ability to opt-out of the system without great risk to their own wellbeing. And while it has never had more money and power to sustain itself, the constituents of Western societies are crumbling under its weight. Mental illnesses across the United States have increased over the last fifteen years, with life expectancy falling due to an increase in suicide, opioid overdose, and alcoholic liver cirrhosis.

In environments that have adopted capitalism and then put it on steroids, discarding regulation to increase their capital (which historically only a few economic elite have benefited from), researchers see twice as many people are suffering from emotional distress in English-speaking nations that adopt this neo-capitalist position, as opposed to Western, English-speaking nations that have not. (Harvey, 2007; Zeira, 2021). Which is effectively to say that in all the colonized West, some nations may cause disproportionate environmental and social impact.

Australia, for instance, has one of the highest per capita carbon footprints in the world, emitting more greenhouse gas than other G20 countries and using twice as much electricity as China on a per capita basis (Morton, 2023). While this footprint is a result of a healthy economic position in Western society, it also comes at a cost. One in five Australian were also diagnosed with a lifetime mental disorder (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2024). Indigenous communities in Australia, such as the Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander peoples, are roughly estimated to be 1.6 to 3.3 times more likely than the general populations to be affected by mental health challenges, and may be higher, given barriers to seeking professional help include cost, experiences in racism and poor communication support (Page, et al, 2022).

New Zealand, however, provides a contrast: in 2019 prime minister Jacinda Ardern introduced a “Wellbeing Budget,” which committed measuring social and environmental indicators to guide government decisions and investments (New Zealand Treasury, 2020). It also included the dedication to financial and systemic support for the Māori indigenous communities, providing community leaders legal platforms to advocate for Indigenous needs across education, healthcare, housing, cultural preservation and more. Given the rising rate of mental health issues amongst Māori youth, the bill created a necessary, even if imperfect way, to pull Western providence into accountability with the communities they’ve extracted from.

However, even promising reforms can stumble. After the positive energy of its launch, communities have grown more critical. Election cycles and shifting national interest make it difficult to consistently prioritize the needs and wellbeing of a population over the economic interest of a capitalist, Western ideology.

“Instead of businesses identifying themselves as exploring environmentally sustainable solutions in the death space, they instead identify their efforts — as imperfect as they may be — as anti-colonialist, anti-capitalist death businesses.”

Without the agency then, for Western civilizations to determine the rules by which they live with nature, perhaps the option for an individual to choose a green burial is the only form of protest one may have when considering how they die with nature. And perhaps a better way to contextualize a green burial then, especially since it is predominately a Westernized term, might be to call these efforts Anti-colonialist burials, or something closer to the root cause citizens are trying to solve for. And instead of businesses identifying themselves as exploring environmentally sustainable solutions in the death space, they instead identify their efforts — as imperfect as they may be — as anti-colonialist, anti-capitalist death businesses.

Because there is a very specific grief that comes with being powerless in a system you are watching dismantle the reality around you. The work of Timothy Morton calls this a “hyperobject” where you are inside of something you cannot step outside of, and it is already too late to make any changes (Morton, 2013). This sort of existential grief can be debilitating, because it’s also a form of disenfranchised grief that’s not even acknowledged in the DSM-5-TR. In fact, the closest diagnosis would be prolonged grief — which has death in the center of the root cause and does not name the impact of Western colonization and neo-capitalism (Ivers, et al., 2024).

Teens like Helana Alexander, who grew up visiting Alaska’s glaciers with her grandparents, shared with Teen Vogue, that when she returned, much of the ice had vanished. She shared feeling deeply alone in her sadness, until she joined a “climate anxiety processing session” at college and felt “like a dam breaking.” This kind of grief is ecological in every sense, and when left unspoken, alienation, disconnection, and a diminished ability to act take a toll on our daily mental wellbeing.

Therefore, it is not enough for businesses to educate people on Indigenous burial rituals. It is not enough for businesses to create “green” or “eco-free” labels. These are the performative levers that do not acknowledge the agency lost by the customers they serve. In the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, many participants grew awareness around the phrase “Say Her Name” as they drew attention to the murder of Breonna Taylor (Chong, 2023). Naming injustice is a powerful, somatic tool that allows systemic grief to express itself in the face of systemic erasure (AAFP.org, 2024). Businesses in green burial spaces, if they are serious about addressing the issue of the planet's limited resources, have to do the same.

And as citizens, unless a burial business explicitly labels its services as anti-capitalist, we can then assume, with agency, that the business is rooted and motivated to participate and thrive in the systems that cause us, and the planet we live on, greater harm. And then you can make a choice — the only choice at the heart of this discussion. Are you going to greenwash your death with an eco-friendly casket? Or are you going to live an eco-aligned life worthy of an eco-friendly ending?

Every phase of our life deserves a hype mother.  Especially our grieving ones.