Sand Springs Funeral Home Offers 'Green Burials'

The Dillon Smith Funeral home in Sand Springs is the only cemetery in Oklahoma offering the green alternative to burial.

The funeral home's director started doing the research on these types of burials, which he says offers his customers a more natural way of burying someone.

"The research excited me when I found out," director Jerry Dillon said.

For the past seven years, Dillon says clients were approaching him about different ways to bury their loved ones.

"There's something about the purity of a natural burial, the simplicity of it; people are wanting something that's more meaningful," he said.

The facility now allows families to choose wooden caskets, biodegradable urns and shrouds when they choose a green burial service and its first green burial was a week ago in a special cemetery in Sand Springs.

"We've dedicated a forest area that's never been touched," Dillon said.

The green burial council said a typical concrete reinforced vault, in which a casket is placed, weighs more than a ton and transporting it creates carbon emissions and energy to produce.

The council said green burials allow for more ecofriendly embalming chemicals that preserve the body during burial.

There are several other funeral companies in Oklahoma that offer green burial services, but right now the Woodland Memorial Park Cemetery offered by Dillon Smith Funeral Home is the only certified green cemetery.