New ways to bury people – level 2

When someone dies, there are two ways that people usually follow for what to do with the dead body. One way is cremation, which means burning the body. The other way is burying the body in the ground.

Neither way is good for the environment. Cremation makes a lot of emissions, and burning in the ground takes up a lot of space. It also puts dangerous substances in the ground.

Natural Funeral is a US company which does water cremation and green burial. Water cremation is a process when workers put a dead body into water, and they mix it with some other substances. When the process ends, the body turns into a natural fertilizer.

Green burial is similar to composting. Workers put a dead body inside a special container with straw in it. They add some chemicals to help the composting. Both ways are legal in three US states, and the ways help the body return to nature where it came from.

Difficult words: emission (a gas or other substance which gets in the air and makes it dirty), fertilizer (a thing which people put in the ground to make plants grow better), compost (old plants, vegetables, or food which people put in the ground to help plants grow).

You can watch the original video in the Level 3 section.