The Green Burial Council Leadership Award

The Green Burial Council Leadership Award is presented to an individual, organization, or business that has demonstrated foresight, innovation and extraordinary commitment to the environment through sustainability and attainability in the area of human death care practices. 

2020 Leadership Award Winner Mark Harris

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Harris is author of Grave Matters: A Journey Through the Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial,the book that spurred the green burial movement. He is a former environmental columnist with the Los Angeles Times Syndicate. His articles and essays have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Reader’s Digest, E: The Environmental Magazine, Hope, and Vegetarian Times. He is a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists. Mark lives with his family in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. This landmark book was the start of educating the public to natural burial – we are deeply indebted to the work Mark has done to put green burial on the map. He has also been instrumental in the development of green burial space at Green Meadow of Fountain Hill Cemetery.
 
“…Mark Harris shows us there may be more creative ways than that to avoid the clutches of the funeral industry and help the earth at the same time.” -- Bill McKibben, author, Deep Economy

Past Recipients

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Suzanne Kelly​, author of Greening Death: Reclaiming Burial Practices and Restoring Our Tie to the Earth and administrator for the Town of Rhinebeck Cemetery where they opened a natural burial ground in 2014.
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Amy Browne, Tony Hale, Brian Wilson, and Jeremy Kaplan, co-producers of A Will for the Woods, the award-winning film that documents a man searching for a final resting place who becomes the inspiration for creating green burial space.
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Shari Wolf​, funeral director and owner of Natural Grace, a firm dealing completely in natural body care and burial, and pioneer, educator, activist, and early adopter of eco-friendly death and after death options.
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Dyanne Matzkevich of Pine Forest Memorial Gardens in Wake Forest, North Carolina, for her work in creating green burial space for Clark Wang, the subject of A Will for the Woods.