Historic Green-Wood Cemetery adapts to 21st Century by adding ancient, more intimate funeral experiences
Green-Wood Cemetery in South Slope began offering green burials eight years ago. Since then, around 20 people have been buried with no steel-lined casket or embalming fluid—just a shroud.
Photo courtesy of Green-Wood Cemetery
By Owen Lavine
May 2, 2025
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GREEN-WOOD HEIGHTS — Brooklyn-based funeral director Amy Cunningham is leading a new type of old funeral these days: green burials. Green burials are gaining traction among people who like “all things natural,” as well as those looking to save money burying their loved ones. Cunningham said green burials offer a way to skip the cremators, covered caskets and concrete vaults while honoring the dead in a “hands on” way. A woven basket, simple shroud and shallow grave is all that’s needed.
Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery started offering green burials eight years ago, according to the cemetery’s President Rich Moylan. Since then, 30 people have gone green. Moylan finds that the term ‘green burial’ has become “trendy” among young people. Jewish and Muslim people have always buried their dead in “green burials,” but the idea may seem novel to many Americans who are used to the Catholic burial practice which is thought of as “traditional.”
Green burials are slightly cheaper than traditional burials, don’t waste tons of steel and don’t emit anywhere close to the amount of CO2 released from cremation.
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