Editor’s note: The San Antonio Report is pleased to feature the weekly bigcitysmalltown podcast hosted by Robert Rivard, co-founder of the Report. We’ll be publishing a brief synopsis of the podcast each Tuesday.
Death is a big expense. It could be the largest expense a family will have outside of buying a home.
Maura Bobbitt, founder of Bespoke Death, a death services consultancy, discusses making death affordable in San Antonio on the weekly podcast bigcitysmalltown.
Most Texans will use a funeral home, and services could cost between $7,500 to $15,000, she said.
Bobbitt, a mortuary science student at San Antonio College, called on the community college to expand programs to include green burial certifications and nontraditional forms of funeral services, like the right to be buried on family-owned land, which she said would help provide local options to make death less expensive.
“It’s a much simpler process that doesn’t require that much overhead,” Bobbitt said of green burials, which do not involve embalming fluids, concrete vaults and can feature biodegradable coffins or containers and a hand-dug grave. “We could offer competitive pricing if we shifted towards a natural burial model.”
Podcast host Bob Rivard pointed out that the corporate funeral lobby is powerful in Austin and has a lot to say about what is allowed in Texas, even though it may not be in the consumer’s best interest.
Rivard asked whether a family member of a recently deceased loved one can go to a funeral home and request “the barebones treatment with the least expensive casket which is at least hopefully biodegradable, we don’t want our loved one embalmed and we want to minimize the amount of money we spend, and if we have a choice, we don’t want to buy a cemetery plot that has a pre-cast concrete in it to hold the coffin, so that it won’t really decompose.”
Yes and no, Bobbitt said. Very few funeral homes in Texas offer viewing without embalming. Some offer more natural services.
Rivard said more people are cremated than buried because they believe it’s more affordable and environmentally friendly, but it may not be the best option.
“At one cremation, the machine needs to be at 1,500 degrees for several hours, so the carbon emission is the equivalent of powering a small family home for a week,” Bobbitt said.
Listen to the full episode here.
