I have been really struck in the past few weeks (mainly by Christmas consumerism and New Year sales) by how we are pressurised into feeling dissatisfied. We are continually fed messages which tell us our lives are empty without certain products, activities or fashions. In order to be more fulfilled, we therefore need to purchase these ‘goods’ - only to find that we remain unsatisfied and there are then more novelties to be sought out, and so the process goes on. In effect we are made continuously to feel incomplete and inadequate. This consequently erodes the confidence we have in ourselves and pushes our complicit escape into insatiable consumerism.

I would see this as part of the deeper spiritual crisis which contributes to the ecological challenges faced by the planet as a whole. To forever demand more and more from a declining resource base, leads us down the path of destructive unsustainability, and ironically even further away from that elusive happiness we continually seek from excessive materialism. We are not at peace with ourselves and cannot be at peace with the planet.

For December 2011 Martyn Goss has collated and edited a new selection of items  on Social Responsibility and Sustainability which include topics such as Food Security, Toilet Twinning, and Time Banks. See under Magazine Articles on this website.

 

The day began with a reflection and prayer and then the day’s perspective was put in place by a short extract from the Transition DVD which led us into our first speaker the Rev Prebendary David Ursell. We looked at how farming had changed over the past fifty years, the huge decline in farmers, farms being amalgamated and the trend to much bigger dairy units all being fuelled by oil in the guise of fuel, fertilisers, plastics and medicines. This is not a sustainable way to farm as Washington is now telling us that we will be over the other side of peak oil and the demand will outgrow availability. David went on to tell us that we do not own the land, the land and all that is in it belongs to God and we are only caretakers for the generations to come.

 

Martyn Bragg, the owner of Shillingford Organics then gave a fascinating talk on the bee’s bugs, insect’s butterflies and birds which if worked correctly with nature keep the land in good fettle at Shillinford. Some amazing slides taken around the farm brought home how fierce some of the spiders and insects were who ate the aphids and other bugs and it was with worry that we heard of the decline in the bee population and ladybirds. Martyn then went on to speak about the rise in supermarkets, the miles our food has to travel which gobbles up yet more oil, and why, when most of the food needed to feed Exeter can be grown locally and sustainably.

 

A picnic lunch was enjoyed by all with Martyn producing some jolly good local bread and cheese and with amazing bowls of different salads grown on the farm.

 

In the afternoon we were taken on a conducted tour of the farm by foot and by trailer and although a conventional farmer whose rows of vegetables would have been pristine but grown with pesticides and fertiliser we realised that to farm organically was using nature as it was intended. Marvellous crops growing quite happily with poppies alliums and other plants and all the bugs and insects you could ever wish to meet. I felt as if I had gone back to my childhood and the fields were just beautiful to look at.

 

Professor Tim Gorringe concluded the day with a reflection of all we had heard and seen. He felt that the outlook was cause for pessimism, the world with climate change, its ever growing population, the misuse of the land, the taking of prime land for building, the growing of crops for fuel and the depletion in fossil fuels mainly oil would inevitably lead to the world not being sustainable and able to feed itself. Governments have to look again at how their agricultural policies can be seen to be sustainable for the long term taking everything into consideration. Professor Gorringe then left us with hope; for indeed we do have hope in a loving God who cares for his creation but we have to accept that we have to work with that creation for long term sustainability.

Local firm Green Fuse offer 10 tips on making a more sustainable world by choosing a green funeral

1.     Plan your funeral in advance. Make your choices and let those left behind know exactly what you want. Funerals are often organised quickly by people who feel under pressure and it’s easy for those left behind to be swept into making conventional choices you may not have made.

2.     Choose burial rather than cremation. If you can find a cemetery or churchyard that is reusing old graves, that’s a very good option, as is a woodland or natural burial site if it’s not too far away. If the graves are hand dug that saves the fuel for a mechanical digger.

You can have a burial on private land. Two family members can be buried on their own land as long as you meet environmental guidelines on proximity to water. If you have a large piece of land, where you could annex a piece off for perpetuity, this is an option. Having processed the coffin by foot the mile from the funeral director, we held a funeral in a yurt in the garden and made the burial on the edge of the property.

3.     Don’t be embalmed. Embalming is a process whereby your blood and body fluids are replaced with a mixture of water and formaldehyde, a substance which can cause allergic reactions, mental disturbance and is linked to several forms of cancer. When a body is buried the formaldehyde leaches into the ground and perhaps eventually into the ground water. In the case of cremation it may be emitted into the atmosphere. Unless the funeral is more than two weeks after the death or certain circumstances have caused the body to degrade, embalming really is not necessary, so state that you do not want it.

4.     Avoid chipboard veneer coffins, which are made using formaldehyde. These are by far the most common coffins used for both burial and cremation as they are cheap for the funeral directors to buy and easy to handle. Most natural woodland burial sites won’t allow them. Also avoid coffins made from tropical hardwoods.

5.     Choose a locally made, ecological coffin. Many of the natural, biodegradable coffins you can buy now are largely made in far-off places, for example bamboo from China, banana leaf and pandanus from Indonesia and increasingly willow coffins come from Poland. Although the companies who import them pack them as efficiently as possible and the actual sea journey may not take much energy, there may be long road journeys to and from the port. If you are buying a willow coffin, there are at least two companies in Somerset that grow and manufacture locally (Somerset Willow http://www.wickerwillowcoffins.co.uk and P H Coates www.englishwillowcoffins.co.uk) and you may even find a local grower and maker in your area.

If you want a wood coffin, find out about where the wood is grown and whether its FSC registered. There is a good untreated FSC pine coffin that comes flatpack and therefore minimises transport (www.eco-coffins.com). There are quite a few cardboard coffins on the market. It’s worth asking which type you are being offered and calling the manufacturer to find out what proportion of the board is made with recycled materials and whether they or their suppliers use chlorine bleaches. If you buy a plain cardboard or pine coffin, you then give your family and friends the option to decorate it beautifully, with water based paints.

5. Or don’t use a coffin at all, but a shroud instead. There is no legal requirement to use a coffin, although crematoria will insist on one to ease the loading of the body into the cremator and so as not to cause offence. But for burial you can use a shroud (check your local cemetery rules), which is just to wrap the body in a few metres of material, or you can purchase a beautiful natural felt shroud from Bellacouche (www.bellacouche.com tel: 01647 432155). If you lay the body on a board, place wadding on top if you want to disguise the body shape and wrap the material around, you then have a shroud you can carry on a stretcher or with ropes or webbing.

6.     Minimise the amount of fuel needed to transport the coffin and the mourners. There is no legal requirement to use a big, petrol-thirsty hearse. For many thrifty people who’ve led a sustainable lifestyle, it just seems the wrong choice anyway. You can ask the funeral director if they have another vehicle – we often use a diesel MPV – or you can use a family car if you have one large enough, or hire one for the day. Pat arrived in the organic vegetable van he used to drive, which ran on biofuel.

If you need to travel a number of miles to the nearest crematorium or natural burial ground, arrange for the mourners to gather locally and hire a bus to transport them to the funeral. For a really local funeral, you could process the coffin by foot. Add a few musicians and flags of bright material and you have a dramatic event.

7.     Depth of burial. When people are buried ‘six feet under’ the process of decomposition becomes anaerobic and the body putrefies and leeches downwards to the water table. Ask about the possibility of being buried nearer to the surface, which may be possible in a natural burial site.

8.     Choose your memorial carefully. Many memorial stones now are made from stone that’s imported from as far away as India and China. Choose local stone if possible, or some other material such as local wood. Many natural burial sites don’t allow memorial stones at all, or just small, flat plaques. 

Choose a memorial site you can visit without lots of car miles. Whether you have a grave or choose somewhere to scatter or inter the ashes, think about how far you’d need to travel in the car each time if you were to make regular trips.

9.     No cellophane. Insist that the florist does not wrap the flowers in cellophane, which only mists up and rots them anyway. Ask them to use only natural materials, and, even better, to use seasonal and local flowers – or pick foliage and flowers from your garden.

10.   Make a carbon offset from your estate. Most of us have a large carbon footprint. A great legacy to leave is to make a contribution to the Woodland Trust or other tree-planting scheme, or to buy and plant up a piece of land. I worked out I could offset my life’s footprint for £8,000.

These ideas and many others are explored more fully in  We Need To Talk About The Funeral - 101 Practical Ways  To Commemorate And Celebrate A Life by Jane Morrell and Simon Smith, available from bookstores for £14.99 and also now with no paper and transport involved as a downloadable e-book from www.greenfuse.co.uk. for £9.99

Jane Morrell and Simon Smith are founder members of the Association of Green Funeral Directors, founded and run Green Fuse Contemporary Funerals, funeral directors, advisers and celebrants, with a High Street Funeral Centre in Totnes, Devon which the public can visit in order to find out about funerals. They also run Funeral Adviser and Celebrant training programmes. They are authors of We Need To Talk About The Funeral - 101 Practical Ways To Commemorate And Celebrate A Life, a beautiful, informative and accessible guide to arranging a funeral, available as a paperback or an e-book for £14.99 from (www.greenfuse.co.uk/funeralbook.htm).

© green fuse limited 2008

Over 60 people, including teachers and children from Devon Schools filled Exeter Cathedral’s Lady Chapel on 31^st January 2011.   They were there to celebrate ten years of work of the Food for Thought project, which links local schools with their counterparts in Uganda.  What distinguishes this from other links is the focus on how food is grown, prepared and shared sustainably in the two countries.

 

There are now thirty-four schools engaged in the project and putting into practice lessons learned from Uganda in their communities here.  For their part, more than 80,000 Ugandan children have been involved and it has made a huge different to growing food for themselves.

 

Food for Thought is run from the Global Centre in Exeter as part of the work of Devon Development Educatiion. It is now hoped to expand the work to other schools in the South West, with primary schools already signed up from Dorset and Cornwall.

 

 

For further details see: http://www.globalcentredevon.org.uk/projects/food-for-thought

The John Ray Initiative (JRI) is hosting a series of professional lectures at the Mint Methodist Church, Exeter 7.30pm on Fridays in March 2011. Under the theme, 'The Environmental Crisis - a Christian Response', contributors include Sir John Houghton (Scientific Advisor) and Ruth Valerio (TEAR fund).