KEY POINTS:
South Australia's largest cemetery will offer carbon-neutral cremations and burials as part of plans to offset the carbon emissions of its operations.
Centennial Park in Adelaide says its carbon offset scheme is believed to be a first for an Australian cemetery and follows a study into the environmental impacts of cremations and burials.
The study found it was better for people to be cremated, compared with the long-term impact of burials, even though four times as much carbon dioxide is produced during the initial cremation process.
"On the day that a cremation or burial takes place, the volume of carbon dioxide produced is higher for cremation than for burial," Centennial Park chief executive Bryan Elliott said.
"The report found that each cremation at Centennial Park generates approximately 160kg of carbon dioxide-equivalent.
"Each burial at Centennial Park generates approximately 39kg of Co2."
However, when the long-term environmental footprint is considered, burials at Centennial Park have a 10 per cent greater impact than cremations.
"Burial is a more labour- and resource- intensive process, consumes more fuels and produces larger quantities of waste than cremation.
"Our initial research suggests that in order to offset the environmental footprint of burials and cremations at Centennial Park, we need to plant around one tree for each service," Elliott said.
"Based on the current total number of services performed at Centennial Park, the total cost is likely to be around A$8000 ($9404) each year for cremations and A$2500 for burials."
- AAP
