New E-Waste Problem: People Want to be Buried with their Cell Phones
by Jaymi Heimbuch, San Francisco, California 
on 12.23.08
Photo via Kevin Dooley
How this slips past the EPA, gee, we'll never know.
It’s hard enough to keep e-waste out of landfills, what will cell phones and iPods being tossed aside for the newest versions. But what happens if they get buried in a different place – say, the cemetery?
A new trend could put e-waste issues on a whole different level. People are starting to be buried with their cell phones and other gadgets.
We only wish we were joking.
“It seems that everyone under 40 who dies takes their cell phone with them,” says Noelle Potvin, family service counselor for Hollywood Forever, a funeral home and cemetery in Hollywood, Calif. “It’s a trend with BlackBerrys, too. We even had one guy who was buried with his Game Boy.”
Uh…whaaaa? Turns out it’s a growing trend, and growing rapidly. While specific stats don’t exist, funeral directors concur that it’s pretty common and will likely grow exponentially.
Being buried isn’t very green in the first place - though there are ways to improve it. Being buried with e-waste is extra un-green.
Some of the possible explanations are that it represents a person, and is part of their legacy. Another occurance is that a playing iPod is placed in the casket with the person, so they’re buried with music playing, or that a cell phone is buried with the person so that the living can call them later.
We’ll let you make the cultural conclusions, and we’ll stick with the e-waste issue. Fact is, this is a very un-eco-friendly trend and if it’s on the rise, that presents an e-waste problem. But the bigger problem is that it is one that people don’t seem to be too worried about. The MSNBC article ends on this incredibly lax note:
As for those who want to stay wired in the afterlife but are worried about high-tech toxic waste? Sony Ericsson, Nokia and LG Electronics have all come out with cell phones that are somewhat green.Perhaps even enough to let you rest in peace.
This is a trend to watch, and hopefully to stop in the very near future.
Via MSNBC
More on e-Waste:
EPA Provides New E-Waste Guidelines, But Zero New Regulations
60 Minutes Reporter Attacked in Chinese E-Waste Pit
EPA Takes a Lax Approach to E-Waste Monitoring, GAO Report Finds
More on Greener Burials:
The Last Act - Green Burial
Eco-Friendly Burial lets you be Green Forever
Georgia Eco-Cemetery Lets Your Family Dig Your Own Grave
Follow @TreeHugger on Twitter & get our headlines with @TH_rss!
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Since many coffins these days are water- and air-tight, and since many places require concrete liners, the slightly good news is that it will take a very long time for those cell phones to degrade and leak into the earth. It's still not a good idea, but then again, I don't think the typical burial is either. Cremate me or dump me in the ground in a shroud!
This just baffles me. Why would anyone want to bury a cellphone with them? It's not like anyone's going to be calling you.
“It seems that everyone under 40 who dies takes their cell phone with them,”
the very reason they died under 40 to begin with-lived way too a rushed and hectic life and forgot to tend to themselves.
Mayhaps some people might want to be buried with a phone lest they discover they weren't as dead as the family thought? Not that the formaldehyde would allow for that sort of thing anyway.
But sheesh, the people taking their iPods and handheld game systems with them... I thought we kinda had it established that you can't take it with you. Talk about the dog in the manger!
At a funeral home I used to work at, we would have to remove things like pacemakers and etc, before cremation as the batteries would blow up in the oven.
I would assume the same thing would happen with any of these devices. Before going into the oven, we would basically fleece the bodies to be sure nothing would damage the ovens. Anything like ipods and etc, would end up being given back to the family.
At least when you get cremated that is what happens.
Don't they know there isn't a great signal 6 feet under!
On a more serious note...
Each year, 22,500 cemeteries across the United States bury approximately:
30 million board feet (70,000 m³) of hardwoods (caskets)
90,272 tons of steel (caskets)
14,000 tons of steel (vaults)
2,700 tons of copper and bronze (caskets)
1,636,000 tons of reinforced concrete (vaults)
827,060 US gallons (3,130 m³) of embalming fluid, which most commonly includes formaldehyde
Some people don't seem to understand that you shouldn't take it with you!