Benefits
The Perpetua’s PrincipleTM of “resurrecting dead lands with our dead” - thereby renewing these lands - offers many interrelated and overlapping benefits, whichever of the various degraded land solutions is used. Read through our short list - and imagine the implications for yourself.
Environmental (↑ top)
- Aligns with environmental awareness and the green burial movement
Our concept aligns with growing environmental consciousness and integrates most aspects of the new “green burial” movement (low-maintenance native vegetation, non-polluting disposal methods, etc). But by selecting the right kind of land, allowing full liberty of memorialization and facilitating alliances with industry, it opens green burial up to broad-scale realization - globally.
- Conserves green-fields
In contrast to current “green cemeteries” or “woodland burial grounds”, no arable or (sub)urban land, wilderness or green-fields are sacrificed to create a Perpetua’s Garden. These scarce resources are preserved for Life-needs, while wastelands are resurrected to beneficial new life.
- Creates multi-use sustainable parkland or garden from wastelands
Rather than creating one more toxic landfill, shopping center or industrial park, a Perpetua’s Garden resurrects industrial wasteland into multi-use public parkland or garden.
- Contains no hidden environmental costs
Unlike most existing after-uses of degraded lands (landfills, industrial parks etc), a Perpetua’s Garden contains no hidden or delayed costs to the environment and society. Nature and humanity only benefit.
Stunning waterfall in a New Zealand quarry garden
Economic (↑ top)
- Creates recession-resistant incentives for remediating degraded lands
By creating a Perpetua’s Garden on their degraded site, state or private-sector land owners can extract new profits from their exhausted lands for shareholders and/or to cover remediation costs, even in times of recession. Unlike other sectors, market demand for burial space is guaranteed to rise.
- Permits easier, cheaper cleanup of contaminated sites
When brownfields are used for a Perpetua’s Garden, compulsory cleanup standards and the associated costs will be lower for the day-use cemetery zoning than they would for be human habitation or long-term activity. The dead are beyond all health concerns.
- Facilitates compromises between stakeholders
Our concept naturally reconciles the interests of environmentalists, local communities, private-sector site owners and government regulatory bodies; as a win/win proposal for all, it should expect enthusiastic cooperation all around.
- Leverages existing environmental incentive programs
Many existing federal and state-level funding and tax-incentive programs for brownfield remediation can be accessed for project funding.
- Converts external business costs into new profit streams and valuable PR
Compulsory expenses to businesses of remediating degraded lands is transformed into profit-making investments, rather than remaining as pure external costs. The environmental improvements also earn valuable public image benefits.
- Gives for-profit cemeteries new business potential
Trend-creating boomers will gravitate more naturally towards the lighter, freer and more naturalistic atmosphere of a Perpetua’s Garden than towards traditional cemeteries with their deeply-engrained negative associations. The openness to new forms of artistic expression and the guaranteed perpetuity of a Perpetua’s Garden grave plot will attract this savings-rich self-indulgent consumer group; this could make cemeteries attractive again as for-profit enterprises.
- Opens up global commercial possibilities
The Perpetua’s Garden concept is ready for immediate translation by industry and venture capitalists into a profitable business model anywhere in the Western world - the supply of cheap, degraded land is matched by the rising market demand for burial space. This formula could find massive application in China, where demand will be enormous and great weight is set on perpetual graves.
New life - and new profit - from this wounded piece of earth? YES! - by healing it with our own dead.
Social (↑ top)
- Provides ample low-opportunity-cost land for the next decades’ burial needs
Unlike with prime lands, there is less competition from alternate uses of these wastelands, thus a lower opportunity cost to use them as cemeteries. Degraded lands like these are often “sold” for a symbolic $1.00 to anyone promising to rehabilitate them. And there are plenty of them to go around - worldwide and in abundance.
- Promotes social revitalization
Communities regain recreational use of unsafe neighborhood wastelands through their conversion into multiple-use sites, as cemetery/park/garden/arts venue. Unlike retro-converting existing cemeteries, these multiple-uses can be integrated at the conceptual stage.
- Improves value of burials
Lower purchase, development and opportunity costs for the land, lower cleanup costs, low maintenance native vegetation and more naturalistic landscaping significantly lower the cost of burial space in a Perpetua’s Garden. At the same time, value is increased since full freedom of expression is allowed and graves are once again truly perpetual. These new cemeteries can also be designed upfront to address contemporary aesthetic and spiritual needs, better than traditional cemeteries currently do.
Ancient Easter Island monuments - what will our world leave for future humanity?
Psychological and spiritual (↑ top)
- Guarantees grave perpetuity
Geophysical site characteristics and/or residual environmental impurity (in brownfields) make our envisioned sites uniquely and intrinsically resistant to future land speculation or re-purposing. Unlike with conventional cemeteries, one either will not want - or will not be able - to repurpose our kinds of sites. And when “Rest in Peace” can be credibly guaranteed again, graves and cemeteries will regain a deeper more satisfying meaning. This will give Perpetua’s Gardens a strong competitive edge over traditional or other green cemeteries, both of which rely only on legal - and not intrinsic - restraints to redevelopment.
- Restores unlimited freedom of memorialization
In current green burial practices, enduring memorialization is limited or forbidden in order to create an impression of undisturbed nature. This greatly limits its broad-scale popularity. In a Perpetua’s Garden, this limitation disappears - there is room for everyone’s memorialization wishes.
- Creates neutral new forums for artistic and spiritual expression
Our sites will provide neutral and naturally self-contained spaces without the negative associations of traditional cemeteries. These fresh new settings could become welcome new forums for free spiritual and artistic expression - for the secular and religious of all denominations. In the long-term, such cemeteries could turn into new venues for the sculptural and performance arts, which have always been interested in death and dying. And landscape architects will also discover that many industrially-produced land formations lend themselves naturally to interesting and attractive design.
- Allows public participation in healing and beautifying our industrial inheritance.
The popularity of environmentalism shows that the public welcomes new opportunities to help heal the earth. The rapid growth of “green burials” shows this is true even when it concerns the last great taboo, death. A Perpetua’s Garden combines the environmental advantages of green burial with the age-old spiritual benefits of perpetual rest and memorialization - it can thus expect to ride this wave of public enthusiasm better than any.
True grave perpetuity - don't we want the same?
