Environmentally Friendly Cremations in India

A new type of environmental cremation has evolved in India as a recent of recent local weather conditions, namely floods.  Extensive flooding in Bihar has take away the ease of obtaining the mango tree wood that is normally used as cremation firewood but, in its place, cow dung is now being employed.  The dung’s widespread availability and the lower impact on the environment of using it mean that the practice is being considered both sustainable and environmentally friendly by those close to it. 

“With the stringent restrictions over cutting green trees, the mango woods have become costlier and it even becomes difficult during the flood season to get, especially when the whole area remains chronically waterlogged for months”, Indian botany professor Vidyanath Jha stated in comments made to the BBC. 

Eco Cremation

Bihar itself is India’s 12-largest state, and its third most populous.  The majority of it is comprised of rich soil, but forests make up just seven per cent of its overall area.  The mango trees used before the floods, then, were a finite resource, and the effect of the most recent floods was to compel local residents to turn to alternative fuel sources.  The result has been to unleash a form of eco cremation in Bihar.

According to experts, the use of mango trees for cremation has numerous environmental disadvantages.  These include:

• The fact that, on average, each cremation uses up a whole tree’s wood
• The air pollution created as a result of removing the trees
• An ongoing trend of deforestation
• The impact on the land of removing these trees

On a wider scale, cremation itself has also been criticised in terms of fuel consumption. 

Dung Cremation

The new dung cremation technique involves compacting the dung into so-called gohoras – elongated cakes, in effect.  These are layered in a pit and then set alight, the flames consuming the body within about 90 minutes.  This, according to a local man speaking to the BBC, is less than half the time associated with using the mango wood and, what’s more, fewer raw materials are needed in weight terms: 200 kilograms of dung compared to up to 280 grams of wood.