Asian Window

From Mint:

Even the dead are adding big time to the carbon footprint.

And the preference of Indian Hindus for conventional cremation in a country of 1.1 billion is only exacerbating the global problem.

If you want to burn a body completely, it will 400-500kg of wood, says Kalu Chaudhary, a body-burner at the Harishchandra ghat in Varanasi.

If you do the math, that means about 50-60 million trees, covering 1,500-2,000 sq. km of forest land, are cut every year to burn the dead in India, says Anshul Garg, director of Mokshda, a New Delhi-based non-governmental organization (NGO) that is developing a technology to make cremations more environment- friendly.

More:

Similar Posts:

• Teaching math to Americans, Indian-style
• Building new lives in Sri Lanka
• India’s decade
• A pocket-size leveler in an outsize land
• The writer’s life: Manil Suri