[excavator whirs and clanks] - [Narrator] Workers prepare a grave for burial at the Hillsborough Town Cemetery.

[traffic whooshes] Nearby, flowers and headstones mark interments of many residents of this historic Orange County town.

Family and friends may consider the cemetery as a place to contemplate the transience of life, but nature feels far away.

[gentle music] [birds chirping] There's a different kind of burial ground 11 miles north in Cedar Grove.

Bluestem Conservation Cemetery is part of the green burial movement, one of 13 conservation cemeteries in the country.

Bluestem requires biodegradable coffins or shrouds for burials, no cement vaults or metal caskets.

Families return loved ones to the soil, hardly leaving a mark on the natural world.

[gentle music] [leaves crunching] Carrboro resident Ina Stern has chosen burial at Bluestem in a simple pine box.

- Green burial is clean and pure.

No embalming, no creating a vault for a body to be in.

The simplest way of burying people, which was done for centuries.

- [Narrator] Stern's cat Daisy lies buried close to a plot Stern's chosen for herself.

She also has friends who've reserved plots nearby.

- I chose this particular spot because of the beautiful trees that are around it.

It's different every time of the year, and I'm kind of nestled into the woods, which I also really like.

[birds cawing and chirping] - [Narrator] Burial fees fund restoration of natural ecosystems, native wild wildflowers like cosmos and native grasses like bluestem, for which the cemetery is named.

Co-directors Heidi Hannapel and Jeff Masten opened the cemetery in 2022.

They planted more than 1,000 pounds of wildflower seeds and grasses native to North Carolina on 87 acres of former farmland.

Native plants nourish the soil and create a resilient landscape.

- We really wanted to create something different.

And we deal with death every day in the conservation world, and so we wondered, how could we marry conservation with end of life?

We are trying to return our bodies simply to the earth using shrouds or simple pine caskets.

Some folks use cardboard boxes.

But we're trying to make as light an impact on the earth as possible.

[animal chitters] - [Narrator] Mounded graves indicate a recent burial.

Within two years, the raised earth will subside as the body decomposes.

Ground-level flagstones memorialize the departed.

Everywhere on the grounds, Bluestem aims to protect the environment, important because the cemetery sits at the top of the Neuse and Roanoke watersheds.

Near the cemetery's office, [gravel rattles] volunteers dig ditches to divert water to a nearby meadow.

- And when you walk out here, you feel the quiet.

And this big blue sky, on a beautiful day like today, you hear the birds, you feel the wind.

And what we want people to find out here is a sense of calm and peacefulness and rest.

- [Narrator] Bluestem Cemetery is open to the public every day from dawn to dusk.

People can pay their respects, birdwatch, or walk along paths surrounded by trees, flowers, and native grasses.

Bluestem isn't the only sustainable option in the area.

Endswell Funeral Home offers water cremation, or alkaline hydrolysis, that uses heat, water, and alkaline chemicals to speed up natural decomposition.

The process is also known as aquamation.

- My name is Hunter Beattie, and I'm the owner of Endswell, which is a modern eco-friendly funeral home in Hillsborough, North Carolina.

We are a full funeral home.

We provide cremation, aquamation, and green burial, but because we're an eco-friendly funeral home, we don't embalm, we don't sell non-biodegradable caskets, and everything we do here is more ecologically responsible than what traditional funeral homes do.

- [Narrator] Beattie says embalming began during the Civil War when railroads refused to transport decomposing bodies of Union soldiers back to their families in the North.

Before that, green burial practices were common.

Aquamation uses an alkaline solution to break down body tissues.

The process releases less carbon and toxic byproducts into the air.

- After the process, we remove the basket, and what we find are bone remains, along with any implants in the body.

So, we'll find plastic implants, which, fortunately with acclamation, are not combusted, and they don't enter the atmosphere.

We can dispose of the plastic implants and recycle the metal implants.

- [Narrator] Co-owner Veronica Penn-Beattie demonstrates shrouding with a volunteer.

Families can apply essential oils and lay flowers on the body before wrapping their loved ones in a shroud of cotton or silk.

- I think, in general, this green burial movement, this good death movement, really is about re-involving the community and the family in this transition process.

Someone we loved is no longer here, and it is a transition, it is a change in our daily lives.

[percussive music] [crowd chatters indistinctly] - [Narrator] The green burial movement is fostering communities who are passionate about de-stigmatizing death.

At the Pittsboro Death Faire in Chatham County, people come together as part of the death positivity movement to celebrate life and its end.

[percussive movement] [crowd vocalizes indistinctly] Ina Stern appreciates being part of this movement.

- In a perfect world, I think that people would not be so fearful about what comes next, because the truth is, we don't know.

We can just do the best we can while we're here and make plans that will help us in that last third of our lives.

[birds chirping] - [Announcer] Thanks for watching.

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