Want To Be Profitable?  Include New Green Options

By Alice Adams on 06/22 at 07:25 PM

Twenty years ago, some families in this country began choosing cremation as a way to protect the environment and spare the diminishing spaces for ground burial around the country. Their reasoning?  Park spaces and woodlands were slowly being swallowed up by urban sprawl and by using cremation, natural resources could be spared.

 

Fast-forwards two decades – where more people are concerned about environmentally-friendly products, diminishing garbage for landfills and preserving natural habitats…so “going green,” as the trend is called, accomplishes many of these same goals.

 

Today’s 50-plus citizens see little value in the embalming, visitations, processions and ground burials their parents and grandparents traditionally required.  Instead, they are asking for cremation and memorialization – maybe not in a church or a chapel but on a golf course or in a football stadium.  Instead of copper caskets and vaults, they’re requesting shrouds and biodegradable caskets and urns to leave less of a mark on the environment.

 

When families began asking for cremation, many funeral directors refused to serve them and directed them to their competitors “down the street.”

 

Today, particularly in the current economy, directors are better served by offering a variety of options to client families who call upon them rather than sending them to another firm.

 

Here are a few suggestions to help create new profitability for your firm:

 

1. Begin offering green packages – one for burial, one for cremation.  Green burial would include non-toxic embalming fluid, biodegradable burial clothing or a shroud, biodegradable container, visitation, services and a woodland burial plot.  The green cremation package would offer a visitation, services, cremation and a biodegradable urn, suitable for ground burial or burial in a lake or other body of water.
2. Publicize your environmentally-friendly products and services – and while you’re at it, begin operating a “green” firm by recycling, reducing waste and practicing environmentally friendly policies.
3. Be aware of green burial sites – and make transportation available to these sites, even if they’re not as accessible as local, traditional cemeteries.
4. Train your staff to use environmentally-friendly practices at work and in other parts of their lives.  Let them know the key benefits of offering biodegradable products and how to introduce environmentally friendly options to families.  Perhaps they won’t use them for grandma’s funeral but they may be interested in “green” options for themselves.
5. Know the laws, rules and regulations for funeral service and burial in your state – and make sure your staff knows them well enough to answer any questions families may have.
6. Just like caskets come in many materials with many options in design, green comes in many shades. While some families will “go green” all the way, many are just now becoming comfortable with the need to preserve the environment.  Your product offerings should include options for every shade of green client.

 

Whatever you decide, there’s no time like the present to offer new options and new ideas to the families you serve.

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