All States Cremation

The National Funeral Directors Association reports cremation rates will reach almost 54 percent this year in parts of the country, mostly along the coast and in urban areas, although casketed burials will remain the leading choice in most Southern states.However, it's projected that by 2035 the rate of cremation in all 50 states will exceed 50 percent.Cremation gaining societal acceptanceThe change from only 50 years ago, when cremations were relatively uncommon, is partly due to a greater concentration of people in cities, with limited room for new cemeteries or the expansion of older burial grounds.“We’ve found that around urban areas and in college towns on both coasts, cremations are much greater than burials,” funeral director and NFDA spokesman Douglas “Dutch” Nie said. “I think that in the next couple of years that rate may rise to 80 percent.”Surveys have cited the fact people tend to move around more often and that most religions, except Jews and Muslims, now accept cremation as proper methods of burial.“For many years, for example, the Catholic Church did not sanction cremations, but that’s changed over the past decade,” Nie said. Now some Catholic cemeteries include memorial gardens.That’s true in Dover. The Church of the Holy Cross cemetery is a one-block area between Williams and Clara street. It likely will be full in less than 20 years.“We built a mausoleum there about nine years ago that had about 80 niches for ashes,” said church spokesman Len Dornberger. “Those are all sold out.”The church is completing work on a new columbarium to hold cremation urns, and more than two-thirds of those spaces already are sold.‘Millions of options’Although many societies throughout history have been known to burn their dead, cremation as an accepted practice in the United States began in 1876 when the first crematory was built in Washington, Pa., according to the Cremation Association of North A...

The Attorney General’s office filed a motion for a cease and desist order on Nov. 26 against Heritage Cremation Provider, based in Colorado Springs.The state says Heritage Cremation Provider advertised through its website, "Trusted Cremation Services in Indiana" including transportation of the deceased to the crematory, obtaining certified copies of death certificates, assistance in filing for VA & Social Security benefits, and rigid container for the return of cremated remains.Heritage Cremation Provider does not have an Indiana funeral home license, and has never held such a license, said the Attorney General’s motion.The Indiana Attorney General’s office investigates complaints about unlicensed health care practice and files requests with professional licensing boards who can then issue the cease-and-desist orders.RELATED   Call 6 finds people accused of practicing health care without a license "It is for the health and safety of all consumers that these individuals stop the work they are doing," Betsy DeNardi, director of consumer protection for the Indiana Attorney General, said in a previous interview with RTV6. "These individuals may not be providing you with the appropriate care that you need. The goal of our office is to prevent and to stop people from continuing the unlicensed practice.”The attorney general's office is asking the Indiana Board of Funeral and Cemetery Service to issue a cease and desist order to Heritage Cremation Provider.The board’s next meeting is scheduled for Dec. 6.Indiana law states that a person who operates a funeral home without a license commits a Class B infraction.Call 6 Investigates contacted Heritage Cremation Provider via email and phone.Matt Broderick, a manager with the company, returned our call and said the company’s owner has passed away and the business is "defunct" and no longer operating."Cease and desist doesn't really matter," Broderick said...

She’s already picked one out — a big, old Gravenstein apple tree at her granddaughter’s place on Beacon Hill. “That kind of tree makes the best apple pies,” Baker said. “At least my family thinks so.”Baker, 84, lives in Seattle’s First Hill neighborhood and is an enthusiastic supporter of Recompose, an emerging death-care alternative to traditional cremation and burial. Instead of going up in flames or into a graveyard, Baker wants her body taken to a future Recompose facility, placed in a bed of plant matter (mostly wood chips and straw) and, in a process taking roughly 30 days, decomposed into dark, nutrient-rich soil.“The kids tease me about it. But that’s such a better way to say goodbye than shooting a bunch of carbon into the atmosphere,” said Baker, who founded the climate change-focused Edwards Mother Earth Foundation.Today, Recompose is still just a concept. But over the past year, with scientific testing using donated bodies at Washington State University, a peer-reviewed scientific paper about those results underway, plus legislative support in Olympia, it’s approaching reality. Recompose founder Katrina Spade says the first-ever facility could open in Seattle as soon as 2020.Spade grew up on a New England farm. Her dad was a doctor; her mom was a physician assistant and environmental activist. In their household, the cycle of birth and death was an acknowledged, everyday fact. Recompose, founded in 2014 under the name Urban Death Project, started as just a strange, daunting idea. Could Spade engineer a way that allowed people, especially people in cities, to bypass the expense and toxicity of the traditional funeral industry (with its embalming fluids, varnished caskets and carbon-heavy cremation) and let their bodies naturally decompose — perhaps in one building like a funeral home/crematorium, where bodies become soil instead of ashes?The basic questions were obvious: Is it safe? Is it...