A better way to
leave the world
Natural burials
Sustainable funeral services
Restoration burial grounds
Success - Australia’s first restoration burial ground is approved!
In August 2024, we secured approval to establish Australia's first restoration burial ground on a 7 hectare site near Adelaide in South Australia.
Achieving this milestone establishes ‘proof of concept’, and lays the foundations for the development and delivery of sustainable funeral services. The Earth Funerals team are now focussed on scaling of the enterprise and commencement of trading activity.
The South Australian burial ground is expected to be operational in 2025. In the meantime, the Project’s service delivery arm, Sustainable Funerals Australia Inc, has launched its first sustainable service offering in the form of a carbon-positive direct cremation service - Earth Direct Cremation.
What's next?
Securing land and consent for Australia's (and as far as we know the world's) first restoration burial ground was a significant milestone! However, this is just the beginning, and there is much more to be done to ensure that all Australians have access to genuine sustainable funeral options.
Next steps include:
- Securing further philanthropic, and impact investment funding, to accelerate growth and expansion
- Planning, designing and opening the first burial ground
- Building capacity through recruitment of operational personnel
- Identifying and securing further sites to build a national network of burial grounds
- Develop innovative funeral and burial ground technologies such as:
- the Odyssey - eco casket system,
- a tech-based, grave location app and
- digital memorialisation.
- Establishing funeral delivery centres near all major cites to support burial grounds
Pioneers for change
Kevin Hartley is the Founder and acting CEO of the Earth Funerals Project. After more than twenty years working and consulting in the end-of-life space, he recognised that people’s needs and preferences were changing, but the industry wasn’t. It was time to do things differently.
Attracted to the commonsense of natural burial he began lobbying for legislative change, promoted shroud burials and won awards for innovation within the category. This early work laid the foundations of the Earth Funerals concept. It’s a simple idea to link individual death with environmental restoration. A way for people to celebrate lives and at the same time contribute to the wellbeing of our planet.
The idea has attracted the support of visionary seed-funding donors, and brought together skilled individuals, strategic partners and other charities all working to revolutionise the funeral and cemetery sector.