If You Care About the Planet in Life… What About Death?

The climate conversation feels different right now.

In some places, environmental protections are being rolled back. In others, initiatives are stalled or underfunded. You might feel frustrated. Or tired. Or quietly worried about where all of this is heading.

It’s easy to feel small in the face of global systems.

And yet, when large systems wobble, personal alignment matters more.

Most of us who care about the planet try, in our own ways, to live that care. We recycle. We compost. We think about what we buy and where it comes from. We might donate to environmental causes or reduce how much we consume. We try to tread lightly.

But almost no one asks:
What will my environmental impact be after I die?

Death is something our culture tends to outsource. Someone makes a call. A funeral provider steps in. Decisions get made. The process unfolds by default. And default usually means industrial.

Flame-based cremation uses fossil fuels. Conventional burial often includes embalming chemicals, caskets made of old growth wood with metal components, and concrete vaults. It’s simply how the system evolved.

A lot of that evolution took hold after the American Civil War, when embalming became common so soldiers’ bodies could be transported home. What started as a practical wartime solution slowly became standard practice.

Everything old becomes new again.

But here’s the thing. “Green burial” isn’t some new, fringe idea. For most of human history, bodies were returned to the earth without chemicals, vaults, or industrial processes. In many traditions, direct earth burial was simply how it was done.

There is a growing return to simpler, land-based practices. Natural burial. Conservation burial. Family-led rituals. And alongside that return, there is real innovation: alkaline hydrolysis, sometimes called water cremation, and natural organic reduction, often referred to as human composting.

You may or may not have access to these options where you live. Not every region offers them yet.

But even if your local choices are limited, you still have agency. You can decline embalming. You can choose simpler, biodegradable materials. You can clarify what matters to you so that your care is not decided by default in a moment of grief and urgency.

The deeper question isn’t just, “Which option is the greenest?”

It’s this:
What motivates you to care about the earth in the first place?

Is it stewardship? A sense of interconnection? A desire not to burden future generations? A love of forests, oceans, soil?

If those values shape how you live, would you want them reflected in how you are laid to rest?

When systems feel unstable, returning to your own values can be steadying. It’s a quiet but powerful act to say: even here, even at the end, I choose alignment.

In the Willow Workshop® Greening Your Death and Aligning Your Values, we explore these questions together. Not in a doom-and-gloom way. Not as a checklist. But as a thoughtful, honest conversation about impact, possibility, and meaning.

Because your life reflects what matters to you, and your deathcare can, too.

If you care about the planet in life, it’s worth pausing long enough to ask: What about death?