New Jerseyans wishing to protect the Earth can do so even after they’re gone. As one of his final legislative moves, former governor Phil Murphy signed a bill that allows Garden State residents to choose human composting, instead of the traditional methods of burial or cremation, for when they die.
The new law permits funeral directors to use natural materials to accelerate decomposition, turning a body into about a cubic yard of soil.
Here’s how it works: Instead of being placed in a coffin, the body spends four to seven weeks in a container filled with organic materials such as wood chips, straw and alfalfa. Microbes from these natural resources quickly break down the body into nutrient-rich soil. Family or friends can then bury the soil in a cemetery, mix it with soil under a newly planted tree or in a garden, or release it at a designated spot, similar to what is often done with cremation ashes.
New Jersey is the 14th state to embrace the practice, joining New York, Maryland, Delaware, Colorado, Maine and others. In New Jersey, facilities must be registered each year and approved by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.
The process has been hailed by environmentalists. In a traditional burial, toxins from substances like embalming fluid and items like metal or treated-wood caskets and their nonbiodegradable linings can leech undesirable materials into the earth and water surrounding the burial site. Cremation requires fossil fuels and creates air pollution.
In New Jersey, residents preferring an eco-friendly but more traditional approach to burial have the option of choosing a green cemetery, where embalming fluid is not used and the body is encased in a biodegradable shroud, quilt, afghan or blanket, or an unvarnished pine coffin.
For now, New Jersey has just one fully green cemetery and it’s in an idyllic Pine Barrens forest setting in Upper Township, Cape May County. “Steelmantown Cemetery started as a green cemetery around 1700,” says Steelmantown’s owner and operator, Edward F. Bixby II. “In those days, people were buried in an eco-friendly way. Those practices eventually changed.”
When Bixby, 54, bought the derelict, 13-acre cemetery 19 years ago, he gave it a complete overhaul, returning it to a place of beauty and its burial practices to their original, natural form.
Bixby’s ancestors settled in the area in 1680 and were living there when the cemetery was created. Many of his forebears are buried there, as is his younger brother, George, who died in infancy in 1956.
“My ancestors had a king’s land grant of 195,000 acres. We pretty much developed Atlantic County,” Bixby says. “They probably would have appreciated knowing that one of their descendants has restored the cemetery to a green one.”
With more than 750 green burials to date, the cemetery has become so successful that Bixby now owns 15 green cemeteries from here to California.
Besides eco-friendly burials of both bodies and cremains, the cemetery requires that any flowers, shrubs or trees planted over plots be indigenous to the area. Plots are marked with natural materials, like big stones that loved ones have painted.
Survivors of the deceased are invited not only to serve as pallbearers, but also to personally lower the body into a hand-dug grave.
A chapel is available for those wishing to use it.
“We’re changing the face of death care,” says Bixby, who served for years as president of the Green Burial Council and is considered a pioneer of natural burials.
Guided tours of the cemetery are provided by its employees, often Bixby’s daughters Ava, 21, and Mina, 18. His other daughter, Krystal, 32, the mother of Bixby’s three grandchildren, and his son, Joe, 24, haven’t joined the family business.
Pamela Pfrommer, 63, recently took the tour with her friend and neighbor Leah Simpkins, 82. Both women live in nearby Ocean View.
Pfrommer, a retired hardware-store associate, is considering Steelmantown Cemetery as her final resting place. “I frequently take walks along the three miles of the cemetery’s paths here,” says Pfrommer. “On sunny days, I remove my shoes and enjoy walking on the thick moss that covers much of the ground. This place is so peaceful. Being interred here would put me in a spot that has given me so much pleasure.”
