About this item
Despite the widespread attention garnered by Jessica Mitford's 1963 expos of the funeral industry, The American Way of Death, the American way of death still includes average funeral expenses of between $8,000 and $12,000. What's more, every year conventional burials in the U.S. bury 800,000 gallons of embalming fluid, containing carcinogenic formaldehyde; hundreds of thousands of tons of wood, steel, copper, and bronze caskets; and millions of tons of concrete vaults. There is a better way and Fournier, affectionately dubbed the "Green Reaper," walks readers through it, step-by-step. With green burial and home funeral basics to legal how and what's; choices in practices (at home, at sea, etc.) ; and even detours into examples of celebrity green burials; this is comprehensive and compassionate guidance.
About the Author
Elizabeth is a lifetime undertaker who owns and operates Cornerstone Funeral Services in Boring, Oregon. She serves on the Advisory Board for the Green Burial Council, the environmental certification organization setting the standard for green burial in North America. Elizabeth is a founding member of Green Burial Portland, a natural burial consortium, and she starred in the documentary Death Goes Green, an intimate portrait of the pioneers of the green burial movement, which placed in the International Hot Docs Festival in Toronto, Canada.
She is also an actress in commercials, film work, voice overs, and has appeared in three episodes of the NBC series, Grimm. She was sought after to sell caskets to the prop department for death-related scenes, and was consulted with as a mortuary advisor. Elizabeth is currently the voice of the autopsy exhibit in the forensic wing at the United States National Museum of Medicine.
