I WAS elated when the Catholic church lifted its ban on cremation. I?ve always thought of cremation as ?greener? because the dead didn?t end up occupying too much space. The contrast is glaring: just compare the space taken up by a niche in a columbarium (a place where the ashes of the deceased are kept) with a plot of land and a tomb in an overcrowded cemetery or memorial park.

In fact, if you want to go all the way with being green, you can have your ashes thrown to the winds in a place you love. I thought of Manila Bay once with its beautiful sunset, but that was before I realized it was so polluted.

Cremations aren?t all that ecologically friendly, though. In many parts of the world, cremations are still done with wood, lots of it, which means cutting down trees. Modern cremation uses high temperatures in an oven-like machine, and consumes electricity. Cremation vaporizes much of the corpse, and the ashes are actually pulverized bone materials.

Recently I was listening to a program on National Public Radio (NPR) where they talked about being ?beetleized? after death. The program featured a prominent field biologist, Bernd Heinrich, who says that modern burials tend to interfere with the ?natural undertakers,? mainly burial beetles (that?s their name!) and other tiny creatures of the earth that take care of properly disposing corpses and returning us back to nature.

I did a bit more research and discovered a ?natural burials? movement, which looks for ways to return the body to the earth as quickly and naturally as possible. This means no embalming (the formalin slows down the decomposition of the corpse, which is why it?s used for long wakes), and no caskets (which seal off the corpse from natural processes and also ?pollute? the environment because modern coffins are nonbiodegradable).

We wouldn?t fear death as much if we had more meaningful ways of being ?disposed of.? Think of disposition: Heinrich looks at death as a renewal, a return to our origins. He says that after death, we don?t decompose but are recomposed. The NPR program referred to another well known biologist, William D. Hamilton, who lyrically described in an open letter why he wanted to be buried in the Amazon forest (his area of research expertise) and handed over to the beetles: ?No worm for me, or sordid fly; rearranged and multiple, I will at last buzz from the soil like bees out of a nest?indeed, buzz louder than bees, almost like a swarm of motor bikes. I shall be borne, bettle by flying beetle, out into the Brazilian wilderness beneath the stars.?

The natural or green burial movement isn?t really that new. Muslims have been using green burial principles for centuries. Muslims look at death very positively?a moving on to another life?so they try to minimize the grieving and mourning. Burials are prescribed within the same day of death, the remains shrouded in a simple piece of cloth. The graves have simple markers, something which green burial advocates also suggest. Green burial advocates suggest that if a coffin is to be used, it should be a plain wooden box.

The green burial movement is strongest in the US, Canada and the United Kingdom, complete with ?green cemeteries? in a park that resembles a natural ecosystem, for example woodlands, or grasslands, or a field of wildflowers. Only simple markers are used, sometimes a tree or some object from nature. In one California cemetery, tombstones or markers are not allowed at all. The bereaved ?find? their deceased loved ones using handheld devices with GPS (global positioning system). (Some of our cellphones now have GPS, so in a way you?d be contacting the dead through your cellphone.)

There will probably be all kinds of other high-tech developments in the search for greener post-mortem despedidas. The NPR program I referred to earlier also talked about ?promession,? where the corpse is flash-freezed, literally iced. Then they zap you with an ultrasound wave that shatters the iced corpse into little pieces, which the family then takes home or scatters to the winds.

I think there are enough alternatives besides promession. If you can?t go all the way with a natural burial, there are many other ways to make ourselves greener and useful after death. I notice a trend toward cremation shortly after death, and then keeping the urn with ashes for several days of the wake and memorial services. That way, a casket is not used.

Traditions are hard to change though, and many families might want a long wake with the deceased in a casket. If this is the case, a compromise is to recycle the casket. In a cremation, the corpse has to be removed from the coffin anyway. The Coalition of Services of the Elderly (COSE), an NGO, will accept donated coffins to pass on to families that can?t afford a coffin. (Address: Mariwasa Building, 717 Aurora Blvd., QC. Phones: 725-6567, 722-0418, 725-6567).

Don?t forget to explore organ donation, which allows you to live on through someone else. Even more radical, and selfless, was the case of a woman dying of cancer, and who was so impressed with the Ateneo School of Medicine?s innovative program that she bequeathed her remains to the institution. She died recently, but lives on at the Ateneo. ?