Recycling The Human Body
Brian Flowers is seeking to change the world one sustainable burial at a time
Stories & Photos by Trisyn MacDonald
Brian Flowers sits in the chairs arranged by neatly for the ceremony area in Wildflower Funeral Concepts. The natural light shines onto him from the many windows in the buildings.
We rake up piles of fallen leaves to jump in, surrounded by the magnificent colors of the changing trees. When the sun comes out we emerge like moths drawn to the light and bask in its warmth. The lakes, rivers and oceans generously cool us off as we plunge into them until the sun goes down. Even in winter, we brave the cold to go flying down hills of ice or get the simple pleasures of building a snowman. All of these things have something in common, which is the fact that they will come to an end.
“Nothing epitomizes our separation from the natural world more than contemporary funeral practices,” says Brian Flowers, owner of Wildflower Funeral Concepts. His funeral home — which opened in April 2024 — offers less common practices of burials, including aquamation, terramation, and green burial. These processes break down the body in a more eco-friendly way than traditional burials and cremation practices.
Flowers immersed himself in research on green burial when he first learned about it. While working as a cabinet and furniture maker, he used local and sustainably harvested woods, and one day, Flowers saw a pine cabinet lying on the floor looking like a casket. This urged him to contact a local funeral home, thus beginning his journey into the business.
Aquamation is an alternative to cremation that takes 90% less energy and has zero emissions. It uses electric energy as opposed to gas, and it breaks down the body using water, heat and an alkaline environment. You are left with a white powder substance that can be treated like ashes from cremation. Green burial and terramation both return the body to the earth; green burial places the body at one site, while terramation involves composting the body into mulch, which can be spread and used to support new life.
Flowers wants to inspire change by doing this kind of work in the way he believes it should be done. Washington was the first state to legalize terramation in the U.S. and Flowers himself advocated for this notion. At a 2019 Senate committee hearing in Olympia, he spoke on behalf of terramation and its benefits. Now legalized, terramation is Flowers’s preference when considering a burial option of his own.
Green burial is done with no embalming and a fully biodegradable casket. The body contains no chemicals — like formaldehyde — that prevent the natural steps of decomposition from happening. A cloth shroud, handmade blanket, woven wicker casket, or anything else that can be broken down by soil can act as the vessel the person is wrapped in. Loved ones can plant trees and flowers at the site of the burial and watch them grow as the soil breaks down the body into nutrients that return back into the Earth.
The speaker stand and terramation transition vessel are facing the seating area awaiting their next use. The terramation transition vessel is where the body lays when transitioning from the funeral home to the next steps of terramation.
Green burial still has regulations and rules, of course, though they vary from state to state. Legally, bodies must be buried in a cemetery. As green burial legalization grows, the country has gained more green burial-friendly cemeteries. The mulch produced from terramation can be used in gardens or donated to land restoration organizations. Aquamation ashes can be spread in the same manner as traditional ashes.
The perception of death can be something more than just dreary. Flowers has had his own, more personal, experiences with green burial as well.
Ten years ago, his best friend Eric passed away. He describes the experience as being ridiculously hard and sad but also transcendently beautiful and full of grace. He passed in a hospice house on a beautiful spring evening. They rolled Eric out onto the patio, sang songs and spent time with him. As the night fell, his and his wife’s families were given warm water, washcloths and lavender to bathe him and say their goodbyes. They spent three or four hours with him.
“The first steps of healthy grieving come from being present with your person,” says Flowers.
Flowers organized his friend’s funeral, was the officiant at his graveside and memorial service, and then helped close his grave by hand. By throwing himself into this meaningful work, Flowers was able to begin metabolizing that grief instead of letting it dwell within him. He explains that now, having first-hand experience of this process through someone who was so close to him, he can connect with his clients on an even deeper level.
Not everyone knows that these burials even exist as an option until someone close to them dies, and it happens to be the method of burial they wanted and were — or weren’t — preparing for.
“Part of me felt like she knew, and [she] left the pieces she needed to leave for her family and her friends, to kind of come to the conclusion of how she would have wanted to be celebrated,” says Mauri Stoick, whose dear friend recently passed away.
Their friend never explicitly talked about having a green burial for herself, but for her loved ones, it was obvious that this was the right choice.
Stoick says that friends and family gathered in an Airbnb the night prior to the burial. She was buried in Joshua Tree National Park, one of her most adored places in California, which she loved endlessly due to its magnificent beaches and hypnotizing deserts. They watched a beautiful sunset bring the night into motion as they prepared for the burial the next day.
The green and white chairs are prepared for funeral services with natural light brightening the room. Flowers aimed to make the space feel open and welcoming.
After the ceremony, she was lowered into the desert wearing her cloth shroud. For Stoick, it was comforting to see her body outlined in the shroud. “It felt more personal; she still felt like her,” they said.
After being lowered, Stoick and other loved ones had the chance to offer anything they wanted her to be buried with. Because of the nature of the burial, anything buried with her had to be biodegradable. They were able to write letters for her and lay her to rest with them along with flowers.
What followed would be an emotional process of returning the desert sand back to its place. Stoick and other loved ones were handed shovels. Each person took turns shoveling dirt into the grave as the occasional gusts of wind kept them dusted with sand. Once they had built up some layers, the crew guiding the burial took over. When the site was filled, they laid stones, which Stoick says had to be placed very meticulously. They took the palm-sized stones and cast them onto the ground that was now above her, each putting down three as they decided that was the magic number.
“It was nice to know that it's literally just her and the Earth. Knowing her, that is exactly what she would have wanted,” Stoick says. “Her mom said she found an older post where she was like, ‘If I could be buried in a desert sunset forever, I could die happy.’”
Stoick and other loved ones could have comfort in knowing that she would be returning to her favorite spot in her final resting place as nothing other than who she was while moving through life.
When Flowers first learned about green burials over 18 years ago, it sent him spiraling into an internet rabbit hole for hours. He spent countless sleepless nights thinking about it. Prior to this, he worked as a cabinet and furniture maker. His interest led him to end up partnering with a local funeral home, making 100% biodegradable caskets. Thus began his journey into the industry.
Around that time, there were only three green cemeteries in the country and 15 green funeral homes altogether. Flowers knew he needed to play a role in changing that.
“We are terribly afraid of death in our culture, and we're even more afraid, in my observation, of grief because we are trained to run from anything that is uncomfortable,” Flowers says. “We have myriads of things to dissociate us from what is uncomfortable…but it's not healthy, and we need to learn to be comfortable with those with that discomfort and engage it and heal it,” he says.
The topic of death is something that is often talked about in a beat-around-the-bush kind of way. It’s a dreaded subject of conversation that bubbles up unwanted feelings. Many people go through their lives not having seen a body after death, which is not unusual. But to be unfamiliar with something can warrant being afraid of it.
Flowers likes to spend as much time as needed and possible with clients because he wants to guide them into a healthy grieving process. One of the things he believes helps to achieve this is for the family or friends to have a visitation with the body.
Wild Flower Funeral Concepts offers visitations at no extra charge. These can look very different from family to family but their person is placed in the visitation room and they can perform rituals, bathe them, take a lock of hair or simply be there. The body is presented in its natural state dressed in a gown on a viewing table.
People tend to enter this experience with nervousness and are unsure of what to expect, says Flowers. When people come in, he can see the wariness in their posture — they’re hunched over, looking up at him.
They get in the room, he hears small chatter, and over time, the mood starts to change. He will hear people laughing, crying and coming out of the room completely changed in their aura.
“It's very real, it's very poignant, it's painful, it's sad, but it's beautiful,” he says. Although the work Flowers does can be hard, it is also very rewarding.
What is most important to Flowers is meeting his clients' needs; he always wants to make it accessible. Because cremation is the most affordable option, they do offer this at the rate of $2,899. Cremation is detrimental to the environment, as one cremation takes about 56 gallons of natural gas and produces around 600 pounds of carbon, as well as nitrous oxides and mercury. He offers it in the most sustainable way to possibly do it, by using containers made of solid pine and cardboard to reduce the amount of chemicals being burned. For each cremation, they donate $50 directly to Forterra’s tree planting program.
The next best option comparable to cremation is aquamation, which is the alternative they offer for $3,299. Terramation is the most expensive at $6,000.
“It's wonderful work, and I want to change the world. This seems to be the way that I can do that,” Flowers says.
It takes determination to make an impact on the world, but everyone can do their part to inspire change in little or big ways. Flowers accomplishes his part with every eco-burial he’s a part of.
Brian Flowers gives a tour of the funeral home and shows inside the visitation home. This room is where people can spend time with and say goodbye to their person.