think your eco-guilt will be over after you're dead? Guess again! GOOD Magazine presents a snappy YouTube animation on the high cost of dying, claiming that funerals are an $11 billion industry in the US (and apparently pretty lucrative elsewhere as well) while also leading to tons of bad stuff being buried (millions of board feet of hardwoods, over 100,000 tons of steel, tons of reinforced concrete, copper and bronze, etc.). But cremation releases carbon monoxide into the atmosphere, GOOD notes (although the video demonstrates some dramatic and amusing things you can arrange to have done with your ashes, such as having them shot from a rifle, launched into space, or made into a diamond).

"Eco-funerals" seem to be the answer, complete with biodegradable coffins and sensitive woodland burials.