River View Cemetery seeks your input on green burial practices

Cemeteries hold a special place in my heart. I lived next to one as a kid, wrote about that experience for my college application essay, and always visit cemeteries when I’m traveling in foreign lands because every place you go, the dead are honored in a different way.

A couple years back, I blogged about environmentally friendly burial practices in Green until the end. Now, one of Oregon’s most renowned cemeteries, River View Cemetery in Southwest Portland, is designing a Natural Burial Area. In fact River View Cemetery is one of the first in the nation to allow natural burial—where a person is buried directly in the earth without being embalmed with toxic chemicals such as formaldehyde—almost anywhere on its grounds. The cemetery is also transferring some of its land to the City of Portland for watershed protection as discussed in this editorial by the Oregonian.

River View Cemetery is gathering community perspectives to inform the design of their new natural burial area, including hosting three community discussion sessions on June 25, 28 and 29. To learn more contact Jessica Repp at 503.246.4251 or naturalburia [at] riverviewcemetery.org.