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Enrollment is open for two separate summer programs at the Center for Energy Research and Technology at N.C. A&T.

The Energy Engineer Starters Program is a June camp that will teach students in middle school and high school about the use of energy and efficiency and conservation. This program is ideal for students interested in pursuing a career in engineering or environmental sciences. The cost is $200 and the camp runs from June 17-30. Details here.

An energy educators workshop will take place June 22-26 for educators who teach grades six through 12. Details here.

Winston-Salem State University's first annual Generation Green Festival takes place April 20-22. The event is free and open to the public and will feature workshops, an art contest, film festival, fashion show, "Communiversity Day" and tree planting ceremony. Details here.

High Point University will also hold an event with booths and food on April 22 from 1-3 p.m. at its campus amphitheatre.

UNCG and Greensboro College info here.

A speaker at a Salisbury environmental conference I attended in May 2008 made the remark that he didn't want to try to live an environmentally-friendly life only for his body to pollute the ground after his death.

That's when I first became aware of the desire among some Americans to look for alternatives to conventional funeral practices. That interest is apparently growing as evidenced by the approximate 100 people who attended a related symposium in Greensboro on Saturday.

Carol Cothern, assistant director of the Funeral Consumers Alliance of the Piedmont, said a green burials movement is afoot in North Carolina, motivated by a desire among some for a hands-on approach to death care and displeasure with chemical embalmings and funeral expenses.

Nationally, the number of providers listed with the Green Burial Council has grown from roughly a dozen to 300 over the course of a year, said Joe Sehee, executive director. That includes funeral homes, natural burial grounds, casket providers and other goods and services.

The council works to:
* Develop a certification program that is bringing about a new ethic in deathcare rooted in transparency, accountability and ecological responsibility;
* Build out an international network of "approved providers" who are committed to reducing toxins, waste, and carbon emissions that have been associated with conventional end-of-life rituals; and
*Bring conservation organizations together with cemetery operators, funeral establishments, and cremation companies to create burial programs that facilitate the restoration, acquisition and stewardship of natural areas.

"There's all kinds of ways to get green-washed and what we're trying to do is allow customers to distinguish one shade of green from another," he said.

Many options exist for “greening” a funeral service. They include opting for a wood over metal casket, using dry ice instead of embalming for preservation of the body, and burial in a cemetery that does not require the use of cement vaults.

By law, funeral homes cannot charge a separate handling fee for families that provide their own casket. Also, North Carolina does not require bodies to be discharged from hospitals or nursing homes to funeral home employees. Neither does the state require embalming, which is the process of temporarily preserving a body through formaldehyde and other toxic chemicals.

The state lacks natural burial grounds, with only Chapel Hill and Asheville having sites approved by the Green Burial Council. Families in the Triad without access to a green burial ground can cremate the body or have it buried on private land as long as it meets municipal or county ordinances.

With home-based death care, families need to plan ahead of time in order to overcome several logistical challenges, such as processing the death certificate and picking up the body from a hospital morgue.

But this approach can have many advantages to conventional arrangements, says Sandy LaGrega, a member of Crossings Care chapter in Greensboro. It:

• Helps with the grieving process and empowers family members and friends to get involved;
• Respects the individuality of each family;
• Is more environmentally-friendly because it doesn’t use embalming or dispose of bodily fluids into city sewer systems; and
• Is less expensive than conventional funerals because most of the arrangements are handled by volunteers.

I'll be writing more about this for goGreenTriad.com and the newspaper, so stay tuned.

March 27 update below

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State environmental regulators face this challenge: How to protect North Carolina's natural resources without getting in the way of state goals to reduce landfill waste.

That is the heart of the tensions between members of the composting industry and the Division of Water Quality, which has taken steps in recent years to better regulate wastewater coming from composting sites.

Susan Massengale of the DWQ explained that the division previously permitted these facilities through its stormwater program, but officials found nutrients and other contaminants in the water running off the compost piles that could pollute nearby waterways. So the division decided that facilities that did not recycle water on site might need a wastewater permit as well.

“It’s not like they’re being picked on,” Massengale said. “There are standards that are true of all discharge facilities across the state…. I think it’s wonderful that what they are doing is keeping waste out of the landfills and they are a great green industry. But they need to complete that cycle of not polluting the water either.”

Read a 2006 draft memo that explains the division's rationale.

From the draft memo:
"DWQ will not issue a stormwater permit for any rainfall that contacts active composting areas, including raw material storage and processing areas, or rainfall that contacts final compost or mulch storage areas. Stormwater that contacts these materials is considered a wastewater and should be permitted through an alternative program. However, DWQ will issue a stormwater discharge permit for rainfall that does not contact these areas or materials. This policy affects all composting operations, as well as some facilities in the Timber Products industry."

But members of the composting industry believe the division has switched course without adequate stakeholder input or evidence that composters are causing water pollution. Some are seeking help from state lawmakers; Rep. Lucy Allen told me last week that she plans to file a bill that would require a study of composting practices and the development of best management practices that are not too onerous and expensive for businesses to adopt. The bill must be drafted by Thursday and filed in the House in early April, she said.

“I do plan to go ahead and file it because I feel like it’s going to guarantee that whoever asks for a permit that they won’t pollute the waters of the state," Allen said.

Clarity on this issue is important because the Triad area does not yet have access to a local commercial composting facility that can process food waste. Thus, any move by citizens to encourage composting at restaurants, cafeterias and other facilities are likely to hit a brick wall. What more, facilities need access to compost facilities to properly dispose of compostable products. (Read this prior story for background.)

Gary Bilbro, director of the Carolina Recycling Association, is working on the issue. He tried to start a composting facility in Winston-Salem but could not get the necessary permits.

“We exist because we care about the environment," Bilbro said at a recent meeting with members of the industry. "We want to divert materials from landfills. We’re trying to do our part to protect the environment and what we’re looking for is a fair shake here.”

And the fact is, North Carolina has not had much success reaching a 17-year-old law that the state reduce landfilled material by 40 percent. Overall, per capita waste disposal has increased since the base year of 1991-92, according to a 2007-08 annual report by the Division of Waste Management. When waste disposal did decrease, it was attributed to a weakening economy.

It seems reasonable that the current recession could further drive down consumption, and thus waste, but that might not bode well for composters who need a sound business model to convince people to have their food scraps hauled away. The DWQ is working with the N.C. Composting Council to study the water regulations issue, though, with a one-year study of current compost facility practices in the works. I suppose Allen's bill could help get the ball rolling and establish a deadline for all this.

“We have great sympathy for the industry on this point,” said Ken Pickle, a permitter with DWQ. “We figure they have not figured this into their game plan or their site plan or their engineering plan and now they are scrambling to do so.”

Update (March 27)
Case in point of what I wrote about: UNCG tried unsuccessfully to start a joint food composting program at N.C. A&T's farm, and failed partly because of difficulty meeting the stricter water regulations, said campus sustainability manager Jenny Paige.

That leaves UNCG with the option of outsourcing the work. Paige said university employees are now working to draw Brooks Contractors to the area by finding other large scale food users in Greensboro who will start composting programs. I talked to Amy Brooks of the Goldston composting facility a while back and she said the company was interested in starting a Greensboro route but needed several clients to make it practical.

“It’s a hard situation because you don’t want to say we’re building a composting base for one business, but we need to compost,” Paige said.

UNCG is doing a lot as part of its sustainability initiative. Paige added that UNCG also plans to compost yard waste on the campus and would like to purchase compostable products for cafeteria use. But...

“It doesn’t mean anything if you don’t have a composting program in place," she said.

I'm betting that funerals and cemeteries are not the first things that pop into people's minds when they decide to adopt environmentally-friendly lifestyles. But interest is building in the concept of "green burials" as evidenced by this symposium taking place in Greensboro next month.

The symposium at FaithAction International House will provide information on family-coordinated funerals and natural alternatives to modern burials. One of the speakers at an environmental conference I attended last year made the point that he didn't want to try to live a sustainable life and then have his embalmed body leaching poisonous chemicals into the ground.

Symposium workshops include:

* Funeral Myths and Consumer Rights and Options by presenter Carol Cothern, of Funeral Consumers Alliance of the Piedmont: Did you know that North Carolina law never requires embalming? That sealed metal caskets actually contribute to putrefaction? That you can serve as your own funeral director? In this workshop, a dozen myths related to funerals will be exploded. In the process, participants will gain valuable knowledge about their rights and
options as funeral consumers.

* Natural Burial and Caring for the Body at Home by presenter Sandra Crater LaGrega, Crossings, of Caring for Our Own at Death: This workshop will introduce participants to why natural, at-home after-death and home funeral care is worthwhile and what it involves. Participants will learn some of the noninvasive skills involved in caring for the body of a loved one in the home. They will also receive a bibliography and resource list pertaining to home
funerals.

* Muslim‐Jewish Funeral Practices and How Shared Death‐Care Concerns Are Sparking Interfaith Collaboration by presenters Ahmad‐Rufai Abdullah and David Zabarsky, of Raleigh:
This workshop will explore Muslim and Jewish burial practices and how their common death care concerns are sparking interfaith collaboration.... A need for religious accommodation and less government regulatory intrusion on these religious funeral rituals in the U.S. have brought the Muslims and Jews on a common course of actions and advocacy on behalf of the Muslim and Jewish dead and their families.

The N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources released its 2008 State of the Environment report this week.

A message from Secretary Bill Ross to employees:

"You and I together have written many stories in the past eight years; some chapters are complete, while the structure, rhyme and rhythm of others are just coming together. The stories we have written -- by conserving land, protecting water quality, ensuring the environmental health of our state, helping the people of North Carolina overcome the impacts of drought, putting out fires both natural and man-made, and bringing environmental education opportunities to residents and businesses -- stand testament to the talent you bring to bear in protecting the environment, for the health, well-being and benefit of all."