From TalkDeath:
“Cemetery Overcrowding is Leading
Europe to Recycle Burial Plots”
When the city of Faro in the
southern coast of Portugal ran out of burial space early this summer, officials
were forced to reckon with the dreaded issue of cemetery overcrowding. Recent
decedents accumulated in the coolers of local funeral homes, lending a sense of
urgency to the management of the city’s dead, and in the end, there was no
choice but to make room where there was none. Existing burial plots were
cleared of their long-term occupants and reused, in a strategy that raised
fewer eyebrows than the problem of overcrowding itself. The practice of
exhuming old remains (“raising the bones”, as the act is colloquially known)
may be unfamiliar to many, but not to the Portuguese whose friends and family
rest in particularly sought after cemeteries. The current form of the practice
was introduced in 1962, to fight the growing lack of room in century-old
municipal cemeteries, but the reuse of burial space far predates that time.
Before the widespread advent of cemeteries in the late 1800s, the Portuguese
had buried most of their dead in churchyards, always with the implicit
understanding that when the time came to bury the new, the old would be brought
up and moved into a common ossuary. It seems natural that such a practice would
eventually arrive at the current form of grave recycling, where “perpetual”
plots may still be purchased as any other form of real estate, but “temporary”
plots may only be occupied for 3 to 5 years. Once the lease is up, bone remains
may be transferred to one of the niches that line the walls of the cemetery, or
stored as ashes in a columbarium. Families are expected to make the decision
and bear witness to the exhumation, but that’s about the only formality
surrounding the pragmatic procedure, which isn’t accompanied by any further
ritual or ceremony.
More and more European countries
are being forced to adopt similar strategies against a harrowing lack of burial
space. In Greece, burial plots are also rented for a 3-year period, with yearly
extensions available at increasingly prohibitive price points; other countries have
extended their leases to last at least a decade, with the Netherlands leasing
plots for 10 to 20 years, Switzerland and Sweden for 25, Italy for 10 to 30,
and Germany for 15 to 30. France, like Portugal, still allows for the purchase
of perpetual plots, but there are also temporary leases lasting for 10, 30, and
50 years. Even more cautious is the UK, where the City of London Cemetery has
taken to reusing graves that haven’t been touched in 75 years.
The problem of overcrowding is
bound to get worse as European populations continue to age—and die. It is being
predicated that many existing cemeteries will reach maximum capacity in the
coming decades. But is the construction of new cemeteries worth the trouble and
environmental cost to cities? Cities have expanded so far beyond their original
limits it’s unlikely new burial grounds could be established within practical
distance of their target communities; likewise, with urban space at a premium,
it’s worth considering the practicalities of acquiring a piece of land large
enough to bury a 21st century metropolis. It stands to reason, then, that the
simplest way to bury those who’ve lived and died in urban centers is still to
guarantee the continued use of what little burial space there is. Short grave leases may not allow the body to
fully decompose— a reality many Portuguese cemeteries are already contending
with. To this end, many cemeteries
routinely employ what the UK has come to call “lift and deepen”, a practice
where old remains are temporarily removed to allow for the grave to be
deepened, then replaced in the bottom while new bodies are placed on top. Other
cemeteries will move old remains into a mass grave or common ossuary; others
will box the remains before placing them in an alternative area of the
cemetery, such as a wall niche. In many cases, exhumed remains are simply
cremated and returned to families, who may do with them as they please.
Practical as it all may sound,
there are still shortcomings to the practice of grave recycling, especially
considering that it doesn’t always account for the realities of physical death
and decomposition. Short grave leases may not allow the body to fully
decompose— a reality many Portuguese cemeteries are already contending with,
such as in the city of Porto where 55% to 64% of bodies were found not fully
decomposed after their first exhumation. In all cases, the remains had to be
reburied for an additional two-year period, which effectively brings the
efficiency of this short a lease into question. If cemetery administrations
truly wish to increase the rate of decomposition in temporary graves, then it
bears looking into the practices and recommendations of a growing alternative
practice, that of green burial. As a practice that aims to create as little
impact on the environment as possible, green burial has the fortunate side
effect of letting decomposition run its natural course. By rejecting embalming
chemicals, heavy duty caskets, and burial vaults—all add-ons meant to preserve
and protect the body— proponents of green burial have important lessons to
teach if the end goal is to allow the dead to return to the earth in the
limited time they are allotted in a leased burial plot.
Eternity can still be bought, for the right
price.
It could also be argued that the
easiest way to avoid cemetery overcrowding is to reject burial altogether, and
indeed, this argument has been a part of the marketing arsenal for cremation
for quite some time. It fails to take into the account, however, the many ways
cremation can be undesirable, or even downright inaccessible. The Greek example
is paradigmatic, as despite the ongoing struggle with cemetery overcrowding,
Greece is still the only mainland country in the European Union without
cremation facilities, in part due to the fact that cremation has yet to garner
the approval of the Greek Orthodox Church. Those who wish to cremate their dead
must have them transferred to the neighboring country of Bulgaria, an
impractical and costly solution. Even in places with easy access to crematoria,
the practice still places a certain amount of strain on burial space, as
proponents of cremation will still gravitate to the cemetery in order to bury
cremation urns, indefinitely. It seems as if housing the dead—be they flesh or
bone or ash—in the cities of the living may be turning into a privilege most
people can no longer afford. This is made abundantly clear in countries that
continue to offer costly perpetual plots along with a variety of affordable
temporary options. Here, the message being communicated is almost comically
classist: cemetery overcrowding may be a dramatic concern, but exceptions can
be made. In the long run, there’s no telling which strategy against cemetery
overcrowding will prove sustainable. Indeed, at this point, there’s only hoping
cities around the world will be prepared to commit to a course of action when
the need for it arises. So far, Europe seems to have chosen cremation and grave
recycling as its weapons against cemetery overcrowding, while America— which is
just now beginning to come to terms with the problem— has started to consider
relocation as an appropriate solution to the shortage of burial space in
specific cemeteries. Perhaps, due to a cultural attachment to the cemetery as a
veritable open-air museum, a monument to an individual’s ancestry and personal history,
Americans will be more reluctant to resort to strategies such as grave
recycling. If Americans were to consider the practice of grave recycling, the
question bears asking: what would be lost, and would be gained, from giving up
one’s place of eternal rest in favor of a short-term lease agreement?
^ This is completely disgusting.
I used to think the US was better than Europe because you got free drink
refills and didn't have to pay to use the bathroom, but clearly the US is
better because they don't swindle you or your relatives even after you/they
die. Any person who digs-up an already buried grave and removes the remains so
they can rent it out to someone else (even after 15, 50, 70, etc. years) is
going straight to hell. So much for RIP. This is a new-low for the Europeans. ^
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