×
Two Together: Save £100!Save £100 when you purchase two funeral plans together. Call us for more details.
Written by Mitch Tapner.
6 minute read
If the environment is part of how you’re weighing this up, you deserve a straight answer rather than a reassuring one.
Cremation has an environmental cost. A gas cremation burns fuel and releases carbon dioxide. UK crematoria are also regulated on their emissions because cremation can release mercury from dental fillings. Burial has environmental costs too, including land use, embalming chemicals, coffin materials and ongoing maintenance. Unfortunately, no funeral option has no impact at all.
In this article, we’ll discuss what’s actually known, what’s regulated, and where the choices people make genuinely change the outcome.
Key takeaways:
Understanding how a crematorium works also helps explain its environmental impact. A gas cremator burns fuel to reach and maintain the high temperatures needed for cremation. Like any process that relies on burning natural gas, this produces carbon dioxide (CO2). At present, there is no widely available technology that captures or removes CO2 from a gas cremator, so these emissions are an unavoidable part of the cremation process.
The cremation process also releases small amounts of other substances into the air. One of the most significant is mercury, which can come from dental amalgam fillings. This is why crematoria across the UK operate under strict environmental regulations rather than being left to their own judgement. Modern crematoria use specialist filtration and abatement equipment to reduce harmful emissions wherever possible and must meet legal standards designed to protect both people and the environment.
Yes. UK crematoria operate under environmental permitting requirements, including strict rules on mercury emissions. These requirements have become more stringent over time. New and replacement cremators must be fitted with mercury abatement equipment, while older cremators without it are subject to strict operating limits.
Crematoria that do not yet have mercury abatement equipment must also take part in a mercury burden-sharing scheme and are required to achieve full compliance by the end of 2029, in line with the Environment Agency’s crematoria guidance.
Not straightforwardly. Anyone claiming there’s a clear environmental winner between cremation or burial is oversimplifying.
Burial uses land permanently, or near enough. It often involves embalming chemicals. Coffins for burial tend to use more material and more durable material. Graves need maintaining, sometimes for generations. Burial also doesn’t avoid emissions. Instead, it shifts them from the crematorium to manufacturing, transport and groundskeeping.
Natural burial, without embalming and in a biodegradable coffin in a managed woodland or meadow site, has a genuinely lower environmental impact than either conventional burial or cremation. If environmental impact is the deciding factor, that’s the option worth researching.
Partly, and it’s worth being precise about how.
The cremation itself is the same process whether mourners are present or not. There’s no environmental difference in the cremation.
What does differ is everything around it. An unattended cremation typically means no procession of vehicles, no fleet of limousines, no travel by a large number of mourners, a simple coffin rather than an elaborate one, no embalming, and far fewer flowers. Those add up, and for some families they add up to more than the cremation itself.
So the honest framing is this: choosing direct cremation doesn’t make the cremation greener. It removes a lot of the things around the cremation that carry their own cost.
If this matters to you, these are the levers that genuinely move:
There’s no zero-impact option. What there is, is a series of choices that can make a measurable difference. These include the type of coffin, whether embalming is used, how far people travel, and the equipment used by the crematorium.
When it comes to the environmental impact of funerals, there isn’t a perfect option. Every choice involves some trade-offs, whether that’s emissions, land use, materials or travel. What’s most important is understanding those trade-offs so you can make a decision that reflects your priorities and values.
If you’re considering a direct cremation or planning ahead with a funeral plan, it’s worth choosing a provider that’s open about how their service works and happy to answer your questions. At Aura, we believe that means giving people honest information, not just reassuring headlines. We’ll explain your options clearly, help you understand what to expect, and support you in making the choice that’s right for you and your family.
Neither is clearly better. Cremation uses fuel and emits CO2; burial uses land and materials. Natural burial has the lowest impact of the three.
Natural burial is available across the UK. Other methods, such as water cremation, are not currently available here.
Yes, UK crematoria operate under environmental permitting requirements, including mercury abatement.
Not at all. For some families it’s the deciding factor, and for others it sits alongside cost, distance and what the person who died would have wanted. All of those are legitimate.