Death is forever. But what about grave sites?
Lesson summary
Hi there everyone, I’m Jeff, JR is the producer, and you are listening to Plain English, where we help you upgrade your English with current events and trending topics. This is lesson 543, so you can find the full lesson at PlainEnglish.com/543.
I always like to think of topics that have new vocabulary for you, and I think I’ve got one today. What happens when a cemetery runs out of space? We’ll talk about how different countries handle space shortage now that most of humanity lives in a city, where there isn’t a lot of extra burial space around.
Later in the lesson, we’ll talk about a new way to use the word “short.” And JR has selected an English song of the week for us to listen to. Let’s get started.
Cemeteries seek solutions to space shortage
Eight billion humans are alive today. A recent study attempted to calculate the total number of homo sapiens ever to have lived, spanning about 192,000 years. The number they came up with? 109 billion. The total population of Earth for all time, the total number of humans who have ever lived and died, is 109 billion. That means that seven percent of all the homo sapiens ever to have lived, are alive today. The number is an estimate, but one thing is for sure: we won’t live forever. And a lot of humans will want to be buried.
That’s a problem for the world’s cemeteries, many of which are running out of land. Finding vacant land on Earth is not the problem. One study showed that between 2024 and 2042, 76 million Americans will die. To bury them all, you’d need a graveyard the size of Las Vegas. That’s big, for sure, but we could find the space in a continent-sized country.
The problem is space where people want it. Before the Industrial Revolution, most people in the world lived in rural areas. In countries with a Christian tradition, the most common option was to be buried at a small church graveyard or a small family graveyard near a farm. This worked well with a smaller population, distributed across a vast area.
But now, about 56 percent of all people alive live in urban areas—cities, in other words. But even that masks big differences around the world: over 80 percent of Latin Americans live in cities. And people in cities want to be buried near where they live, where their family and friends can visit their gravesites.
But understandably , cities prioritize the comfort of the living. And many big-city cemeteries are running out of space. What can be done?
In London, several cemeteries are simply full. They are not accepting new burials. Families may have to bury loved-ones farther from their homes—an inconvenience for them. But it’s also bad for the cemeteries themselves . Cemeteries rely on income from new burials to maintain the grounds of the existing grave sites. Without new burials, that money dries up .
One option is to expand—but that’s easier said than done . In dense London, there is no neighboring land. In suburban areas, cemeteries can purchase adjacent or nearby lots for expansion. But neighbors often object: a lot of homeowners say they don’t want to live next to dead people, so they veto cemetery expansions.
Cremation is an obvious answer—and about three-quarters of British and Australian residents opt for cremation. Rates are lower in religious America, Spain, Poland, and Italy.
That option, though, is popular in Asia, where Buddhism allows for cremation. But whereas Americans and Europeans often scatter the ashes of their loved ones, Buddhists preserve and visit the cremated remains of their ancestors. That doesn’t solve the problem of burial space—it just changes it.
In crowded Hong Kong, residents can opt to be cremated and to have their ashes stored in an urn and displayed in a public burial niche, like a resting place for ashes. However, space is so short that there’s a five-year waiting list. Upon cremation, remains are stored out of sight. Only after reaching the top of the waiting list can they be displayed in the public niche.
Technology can help, too. In Singapore, families can store urns in a large underground vault. To visit relatives, they swipe a key card. A mechanized system retrieves the urns and the family can have the visitation.
Many religious traditions, however, don’t allow for cremation. One such tradition is Judaism. In Jerusalem, the capital of Israel, the main cemetery is running out of space. So they’re going deep underground. With funds from a wealthy donor, the cemetery built an elaborate tunnel system deep underground to house an additional 22,000 graves, arranged vertically.
Family members can walk down on ramps or take an elevator deep below ground. Platforms allow residents to see grave sites at various levels in the underground cemetery. It’s the first of its kind.
Catholicism allows for cremation in only limited circumstances. And some people, regardless of religious tradition, will simply prefer it. So that brings us to a new, old idea: grave recycling.
Here is why I’m calling it a “new, old idea.” Centuries ago, as cities developed, people didn’t respect grave sites like we do today. Just ask the half-million people who visit the Paris catacombs every year! Mass burial sites, grave recycling, moving human remains, stacking bodies—this all happened long, long ago.
Happily, the idea of grave recycling today is much more delicate. The idea is called “lift and deepen.” After a body has been in the ground for a long time, the cemetery can re-open the grave, dig the grave deeper, and move the existing remains deeper underground. Then, they place a new casket on the same site closer to the surface. In one state in Australia, they crush the gravestone and replace it with a new one. In London, they simply flip the gravestone around and create a new inscription on the flat side.
How much time passes before this happens? It can vary, but it’s between 50 and 100 years. In the state of South Australia, a grave site carries internment rights of between 50 and 99 years. When that expires, families can opt to extend the rights if they want. If the family cannot be reached, the cemetery places a note on the gravestone and waits two years. If after two years nobody has come forward to extend the rights, they perform the “lift and deepen” procedure. The remains stay in the same grave site, but a new casket goes on top.
In London, the waiting period is 75 years. And re-use in London’s cemeteries is optional: after 75 years, a notice is published and a marker is placed on the grave stone. Family members can request that their loved ones’ gravesites not be recycled, and the cemetery will respect their wishes. Even so, the cemeteries predict that grave recycling will allow them to operate in perpetuity. Finally: a cemetery plan that’s as permanent as death itself.
Diamonds are also forever
There are options other than cremation and burial. Actually, the other options are variations on the themes of cremation and burial. You can turn the cremated remains of a loved one into a diamond. This is true—JR told me about it. A process separates the pure carbon from cremated remains, and that carbon is then turned into a lab-grown diamond. And as we learned from an old advertising campaign, “Diamonds are forever.”
But this is still cremation, and some people won’t go for that. So here’s another option. You can opt for your remains to be packed into a biodegradable bag and buried. Then, they’ll plant a tree on top. As the remains decay, they release nutrients into the soil, and that fertilizes the tree.
I like this option the best. I have never thought that I, as one person who lives for one small time in history, I have never thought that I can lay claim to a piece of the Earth’s surface forever. But the world will always need new trees, and you can put a nice plaque on a tree, so I think I would go for the tree pod burial option.
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