Renaissance Funeral Home Serves Triangle’s First “Green” Burial Council-Approved Eco-Friendly Funeral.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – Raleigh, NC – Going green is the rage these days and going out green is catching up. Renaissance Funeral Home (www.RenaissanceFuneralHome.com), located in North Raleigh on Six Forks Road and Pine Forest Memorial Gardens (www.PineForestemorial.com), located in Wake Forest worked together provide the Triangle’s first green burial service for a young woman buried on June 30th at Pine Forest.
Green Burial is a sign of things to come in the rapidly changing funeral business. The array of available options for honoring lives lived has expanded dramatically in the last ten years. “It used to be that people could only choose between traditional burial and cremation,” said Joe Smolenski III, who manages Renaissance.
Green burials are throwbacks to the days when people were interred in shrouds or in pine boxes. Very biodegradable. Very good for the environment. Very inexpensive. Green burials aren’t offered everywhere, but more and more funeral directors are greening up, industry officials say.
Recent research indicates that as many as ONE out of FIVE Americans is interested in Green Burial*.
Green burial uses less energy and creates less waste than conventional burial, commented Joe Sehee, Executive Director of the Green Burial Council (www.greenburialcouncil.org). “Renaissance and Pine Forest are the future of funeral service. We are proud to have them as approved providers and pleased that families in the Triangle now have the option of eco-friendly end-of-life rituals.”
Renaissance and Pine Forest are among the three funeral homes and three cemeteries in North Carolina that are approved by The Green Burial Council to offer these services. They are the only ones serving the Triangle Area. “Natural Green Burial allows the family to mourn and take an active part in the burial in ways that a traditional burial does not,” said Dyanne Matskevich, General Manager of Pine Forest Memorial Gardens (www.pineforestmemorial.com). “It is a humbling, quiet ‘saying of goodbye’ surrounded by nature in the serenity of the woods, returning a body to the soil from which it came.”
Contacts:
Joe Smolenski, Owner, Renaissance Funeral Home: (919) 866-1866, joe@nhpfh.com
Dyanne Matskevich, Pine Forest Memorial: (919) 556-6776, pfgmemorial@yahoo.com
Joe Sehee, Executive Director, Green Burial Council: (888) 966-3330 ext 101
*Source: The American Association of Retired Persons and The International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association
###
