It will be standing room only for those being buried at a new Australian cemetery that aims to provide cheap, environmentally friendly burials.
Australia’s Victoria state government has approved plans for the cemetery at Darlington, 125 miles southwest of the Victorian capital Melbourne, where corpses will be buried vertically in body bags — instead of caskets — on grazing land.
“When you die, you are returned to the earth with a minimum of fuss and with no paraphernalia that would affect the environment,” a spokesman for Palacom, which will establish the cemetery, told Australian Associated Press on Thursday.
“You’re not burning 90 kg. of gas in a crematorium and there’s no ongoing maintenance costs.”
He said burials would cost about around $781, with bodies held in a morgue in Melbourne and transported to the cemetery in batches of up to 15 in a bid to reduce costs. Animals would be allowed to graze on the land again once it was stable.
