Greener Goodbyes offers a simple way to make a funeral greener by understanding its environmental impact.
Purchase a carbon offset through our accredited partner.
Re-establish woodland by planting and maintaining trees.
This may be the first time you have organised a funeral. To help you get started, we have put together a film to guide you through all the steps involved.
To date, it has been difficult for people to comprehend what a green funeral is. For some, it’s the choice of a wicker coffin and a woodland burial. For others, it is a decision not to have flowers at the funeral or to walk to the service. It is easy to get confused. That’s where Greener Goodbyes comes in. This simple app will guide you through the options available and help you work towards a funeral with a lower carbon emission.
This simple app enables you to arrange a funeral, whilst calculating the carbon emissions associated with it. Below is a brief guide to how it works.
The app will take you through the key stages (in a multiple-choice format) involved in arranging a funeral, be it at the time of death, or when putting together a plan for the future.
For every choice you make, a calculation is made of the carbon associated with that choice. For simplicity, an at-a-glance image of a tree indicates how green each option is. The larger the tree, the more environmentally friendly that option is. Once you’ve answered all the questions, the total carbon footprint of the funeral arrangement will be displayed, as well as a breakdown of the results.
Based on your choices, the Co2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) emissions of your preferred funeral will be detailed. You will then be given the opportunity to offset those emissions to help move towards a net carbon neutral funeral. These include supporting the planting or adopting of trees within UK woodland, buying carbon credits for UK woodland creation and the restoration of UK peatlands. There are also a number of established global projects available to support. You can make the payment at this point or store (with a unique reference code) for payment at a later date.
Once you have chosen how you wish to offset the emissions you can amend, store, send or even print your funeral arrangements for future use. These will be useful as the foundations for your initial discussions with your chosen funeral director or to send to a family member to keep until the necessary time comes.
Greener Goodbyes is the only service that exists to help people plan a greener funeral in a really simple way. It covers all aspects of a funeral and is compatible with all types of funerals.
Carbon (in an environmental context) refers to the different greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. A footprint refers to the total impact that an activity has; in this case the various elements that make up a funeral such as burial or cremation, transport, flowers and numbers of guests at a reception. The Co2e calculated by our app is an abbreviation of carbon dioxide equivalent, a measure used to compare the emissions from various greenhouse gases on the basis of their global-warming potential.
A carbon offset is a way of paying others to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases made elsewhere. This is often done by planting or adopting trees or buying carbon credits for an ongoing project. A purchased carbon credit is a monetary allocation for the reduction of Co2 emissions in the atmosphere towards a project that has already taken place.
