A cemetery in North Carolina has built a granite columbarium for their cemetery to help utilize space. The columbarium measures six feet high and it is a hexagonal shape that holds up to 72 funeral urns. The graveyard caretaker says that this has significantly saved space for those that are choosing to continue on with a traditional funeral.
Many other cemeteries all over the country are also choosing to do the same so that they can save space instead of burying a funeral urn like some like to do. We understand that due to some traditional beliefs, such as those of the Catholics, if a person chooses to be cremated, they must also be buried as well. By adding the columbarium to cemeteries that have minimal space left for grave sites, they can put up to 72 funeral urns, neatly displayed, into each columbarium that is added to the area.
Some cemeteries are in need of the space so badly; families that have mausoleums in their cemeteries are volunteering to have them torn down for a place in the columbarium. For each mausoleum in a cemetery, approximately four graves could be put there instead. One cemetery caretaker stated that people that had their funeral urns are coming to him asking to have them exhumed to help save space. They see that it was a ridiculous waste to have it buried as they could have displayed it nicely in their own homes or in the columbarium. With so many people trying to go green, they also feel that it was a waste of natural resources that they didn’t fully understand when their loved one was being buried.