Trees Over Tombstones

Good News Good Planet

For more delicious news, go to www.GoodNewsGoodPlanet.com, and scroll to bottom for more ways to find the feel good stuff!* TREES INSTEAD OF TOMBSTONES Worldwide, death services is a 20 billion dollar industry. Most people don't like to think about death let alone its environmental impact on the Earth. Embalming fluids, caskets, and other aspects of traditional burials take a toll on nature on a large scale. So how can we make our last foot print on Earth an environmentally-friendly one? A San Francisco startup has a unique answer that also protects an endangered Redwood Forest. ‘Better Place Forests’ offers its customers trees instead of tombstones. Clients claim a particular tree and scatter their loved one's ashes there. The location is reserved for them in a protected forest with conservation easements that prevent the land from ever being commercially developed. Each tree is marked with a placard so that mourners can easily find their loved ones. And this forest has 21st century technology, with each placard containing memory chips which visitors can scan to watch a digital memorial of the deceased talking about his or her life. Founder Sandy Gibson came up with the idea after years of dealing with his parents' less-than-stellar cemetery arrangements. His fondest memories of them were in nature—not the busy city street they were buried near—a place he did not enjoy visiting to pay his respects. He just knew there had to be a better option so he and some friends decided to redesign the entire end of life experience. They purchased a large chunk of Redwood Forest on the California coast and they are now accepting reservations for plots. You can also request a bio-degradable urn with seeds for a new tree. There are currently over a million acres of cemeteries in the United States alone. Using the laws that protect cemeteries from destruction, Gibson's goal is to protect a million acres of forests instead. #### *Hungry for more of the Good Stuff? Search "Good News Good Planet" on YouTube, Instagram, Patreon, Alexa and wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.