FINDING OUR WAY TO
The Gentle Way
About The Gentle Way
The Gentle Way is here for you during a delicate time. Planning a funeral is never easy. On top of the pain of losing a loved one, you now have to worry about making extensive plans and a string of tough decisions. One of the biggest things to consider after saying goodbye is whether the person will be buried or cremated. Even if we make this choice for ourselves, it’s rarely an enjoyable decision.
With over 20 years of experience organising and overseeing all aspects of farewelling a loved one, we all want to make sure our loved one gets the perfect send-off, in accordance with their wishes, and we all want our own funerals to go the way we want, leaving a perfect legacy.
For many of us, this involves environmental concerns. In one study in 2018, 54% of people said they were considering a green burial. More and more of us are concerned with our impact on the planet and want to make our final act an eco-friendly one. The Gentle Way was developed to give people this option.
Why Choose The Gentle Way?
Burials are not good for the environment. Each year conventional burials use 13.5 million kilograms of hardwood, 2,700 tons of copper and bronze, and 104,727 tons of steel. The amount of wood needed to create caskets is the equivalent of more than 16,000 square kilometres of forest.
On top of the raw materials, the processes involved like cutting down trees, building caskets, transporting materials, and manufacturing cement all result in an enormous amount of greenhouse gas emissions.
And all this is without even considering the sheer amount of land involved in burial — worldwide our burial spaces account for more than 11,000 square kilometres.
Embalming bodies also comes at an environmental cost, as embalming fluid is rich in ingredients like formaldehyde, glutaraldehyde, dyes, and disinfectants. All these chemicals remain in the ground after burial and seep into our water supplies in worrying amounts.
But what about cremation? It’s sometimes marketed as a more eco-friendly alternative to burial, but it’s not exactly green. The process of cremating a body releases all kinds of chemicals into the atmosphere including benzenes, furans, acetones, and different carcinogens.
The Gentle Way is a truly environmentally-friendly alternative. It doesn’t create any waste or emissions and is completely self-contained. It’s the ideal choice for those who are concerned about the environmental impact of their funeral.