A minimum of 50 impact trees are planted for every heritage tree.
More people are choosing cremation over coffins. Better Place Forests, a California startup, is offering trees instead of tombstones.
So if you choose to be cremated, for a comparable and arguably better price, you can have your ashes mixed with soil and spread around a tree, the company says.
Native wildflower seeds are scattered on top and a number of saplings planted nearby in your memory. The tree becomes a place for your family to visit instead of a cemetery.
The trees are located in memorial forests across the United States, where others have chosen what Better Place Forests CEO John Collins calls a sustainable end-of-life alternative.
The right to visit the memorial tree in perpetuity is protected by an irrevocable license filed with state and local governments, Collins says. The company has a goal to secure conservation easements for its forests, starting this year.
John Collins, CEO of Better Place Forests, lives in Ojai, California.
“I think what I love about this process is that it’s symbiotic with nature,” says Collins, who took over as CEO of Better Place Forests in October, after 25 years with outdoor clothing retailer Patagonia.
Better Place Forests, based in San Francisco, is said to be the first U.S. company to offer forests as an alternative to cemeteries for families who choose cremation. People can choose one tree for the whole family (and their pets) or a set of trees.
The company started in 2015, but has grown from three forests two years ago to a total of 10 now. Better Place Forests has memorial forests around the United States, totaling more than 1,000 acres in California, Arizona, Minnesota, Illinois, Connecticut and Massachusetts.
At the memorial forests, “what I see is a sense of happiness and a sense of ‘I’m making a great choice for myself and the planet,’” Collins says.
Trees are planted in regions near memorial forests via a partnership with One Tree Planted. Last year, 225,000 trees were planted in 18 restoration projects around the U.S. And those trees offer climate benefits, along with using less of the world’s finite land for cemeteries.
“The more trees that we sell, the more forests we protect, the more carbon we get sequestered out of the atmosphere,” Collins says.
The company’s form of green burial isn’t necessarily a cheaper alternative to traditional cremation and a funeral, which averages around $7,000.
Prices listed at the Better Place Forests website start at $6,900 for one person, including a ceremony. The cost varies by location and setting, tree type and size, and the number of ashes of people and pets spread below the tree. You can get a spot for as little as $5,000, the CEO says.
A memorial marker at one of the sites run by Better Place Forests.
“It’s a different alternative, but one that I would also say adds more value for the customer,” such as being able to spread more than one set of ashes at a single tree, Collins says.
Better Place Forests sees itself as disrupting an old model in an industry that’s estimated to reach revenues of $68 billion by 2023. Meanwhile, people choosing cremation over other forms of burial is increasing—estimated to be almost 80% by 2040.
Collins says the number of Better Place Forests customers has doubled since 2020 and gross sales for 2021 increased significantly, declining to give specifics.
The CEO recalls visiting one of the memorial forests before becoming CEO, on the Mendocino coast in Northern California.
“It felt alive. It didn’t feel as morbid a feeling as one might get when you go to the cemetery.”
He adds that Better Place Forests offers “a combination of environmental stewardship at a time in life when it’s difficult to bring joy to customers.”
Besides the irrevocable license that comes with a memorial tree, allowing a family to forever visit the site, the company also has a stewardship trust, Collins says, where 7% of each memorial purchase goes into a third-party managed trust to make sure the forest is maintained.
Better Place Forests is looking to expand, with more forests and to other areas. Sand dunes and wetlands have been mentioned.
“People have connections to places,” Collins says. “And when they can make that connection for the families and themselves at the end of life, it’s just a much more beautiful story.”
