PORTLAND, Ore. – Cynthia Beal wants to be an Oregon cherry tree after she dies. She has everything to make it happen – a body, a burial site and a biodegradable coffin.

“It is composting at its best,” said Beal, owner of The Natural Burial Co., which will sell eco-friendly burial products when it opens in January, including the Ecopod, a kayak-shaped coffin made out of recycled newspapers.

Biodegradable coffins are part of a larger trend toward “natural” burials, which require no formaldehyde embalming, cement vaults, chemical lawn treatments or laminated caskets. Advocates say such burials are less damaging to the environment.

Cremation was long considered more environmentally friendly than burials in graveyards, but its use of fossil fuels has raised concerns.

Eco-friendly burials have been popular in Britain for years, but industry experts say it’s starting to catch on in the U.S., where “green” cemeteries hosting natural burials have sprouted up in California, Florida, New York, South Carolina, Texas.

The planning board in Orrington, Maine, approved in August a green cemetery, where bodies are embalmed with nontoxic fluids and caskets are required to be biodegradable.

In addition to the biodegradable wooden or recycled material caskets, “you can go in wrapped in Grandma’s rug or as ashes,” Richard Harriman, Orrington code enforcement officer, has said.

The graves at Rainbow’s End Cemetery, which sits on 13.7 acres along the Penobscot River off Mill Creek Road, will be marked only by simple, flat native stones, with or without engravings.

Native vegetation also could be used to replace conventional gravestones. Operators hope to begin burying people in 2008.

Ellen Hills, a Solon resident in her mid-80s, is a retired nurse and schoolteacher who came up with the idea for the green cemetery after reading an AARP article in July 2004. She has said she wants to preserve the land her family has owned since the 1800s.

The majority of eco-friendly burial products come from overseas – including the Ecopod, which is made in the United Kingdom – although there are a few domestic makers. Options range from natural-fiber shrouds to fair-trade bamboo caskets lined with unbleached cotton. There are also more traditional-looking handcrafted coffins made of wood certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

The market is potentially huge. U.S. funeral homes generate an estimated $11 billion in revenue annually and that figure is sure to grow as baby boomers age.

There are already specialty funerals, featuring caskets with custom paint jobs and urns with the insignia of a favorite team. Industry experts say eco-friendly funerals are just an extension of such personalized end-of-life planning.

Biodegradable containers cost from around $100 for a basic cardboard box up to more than $3,000 for a handcrafted, hand-painted model.

“It’s hard to tell if it’s a fad or if it’s here to stay,” said Bob Fells of the International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association. “We are certainly positioning ourselves that if this is what the community wants, we are ready to serve them.”

The Green Burial Council is working on certification programs to verify the commitment and quality of providers who say they are going natural.

“What we are trying to do is to make sure this concept doesn’t get ‘green-washed’ down the drain,” said Joe Sehee, the council’s founder and executive director.

BDN reporter Nok-Noi Ricker contributed to this story.