{"id":7430,"date":"2011-09-19T16:32:50","date_gmt":"2011-09-19T20:32:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/?p=7430"},"modified":"2011-09-19T16:32:50","modified_gmt":"2011-09-19T20:32:50","slug":"environmentalists-eye-indias-funeral-pyres","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/environmentalists-eye-indias-funeral-pyres","title":{"rendered":"Environmentalists eye India&#8217;s funeral pyres"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Between\u00a050\u00a0and 60 million trees are consumed in\u00a0India&#8217;s 7 million open-air Hindu cremations\u00a0each year, worrying a group of environmentalists.<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0traditional Hindu funeral pyre &#8212; an ancient ritual that goes back thousands of years &#8212; poses a threat to the living, says Mokshda or &#8220;Salvation,&#8221;\u00a0a Delhi-based non-governmental organization working to reduce the environmental impact of India&#8217;s funeral pyres.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;When you are burning those trees, you are emitting about eight million tons of carbon dioxide or greenhouse gas emissions,&#8221; Mokshda director Anshul Garg recently told the\u00a0Cable News Network&#8217;s Teo Kermeliotis:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Air pollution and deforestation are not the only environmental threats caused by cremation: They also generate large quantities of ash, which are later thrown into rivers, adding to the toxicity of their waters, according to Mokshda.<\/p>\n<p>Mokshda, which began operations in 1992, says it has installed 42 [electric cremation] units across the country, mainly in urban areas, and plans to increase the number to 50 by next year. Anshul Garg displays Mokshda&#8217;s Green Cremation System. Yet, the group&#8217;s expansion has not been without issues: Garg says Mokshda is facing problems from the &#8220;wood mafia&#8221; &#8212; people illegally cutting down trees to sell for funeral pyres.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They even go to the extent of threatening our people,&#8221; said Garg. &#8220;If they (our people) go to install and promote these systems we get threatening calls: &#8216;You don&#8217;t come in our city, don&#8217;t put up these systems or we will hunt you.'&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/edition.cnn.com\/2011\/09\/12\/world\/asia\/india-funeral-pyres-emissions\/index.html?hpt=ias_mid\" target=\"_blank\">CLICK HERE to read more<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Between\u00a050\u00a0and 60 million trees are consumed in\u00a0India&#8217;s 7 million open-air Hindu cremations\u00a0each year, worrying a group of environmentalists. The\u00a0traditional Hindu funeral pyre &#8212; an ancient ritual that goes back thousands of years &#8212; poses a threat to the living, says Mokshda or &#8220;Salvation,&#8221;\u00a0a Delhi-based non-governmental organization working to reduce the environmental impact of India&#8217;s funeral&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":270,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[1591,1592,2212],"class_list":["post-7430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hindu","tag-cremation","tag-environmentalism","tag-hindu"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Environmentalists eye India&#039;s funeral pyres<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/environmentalists-eye-indias-funeral-pyres\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Environmentalists eye India&#039;s funeral pyres\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Between\u00a050\u00a0and 60 million trees are consumed in\u00a0India&#8217;s 7 million open-air Hindu cremations\u00a0each year, worrying a group of environmentalists. The\u00a0traditional Hindu funeral pyre &#8212; an ancient ritual that goes back thousands of years &#8212; poses a threat to the living, says Mokshda or &#8220;Salvation,&#8221;\u00a0a Delhi-based non-governmental organization working to reduce the environmental impact of India&#8217;s funeral&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/environmentalists-eye-indias-funeral-pyres\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-09-19T20:32:50+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Environmentalists eye India's funeral pyres","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/environmentalists-eye-indias-funeral-pyres","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Environmentalists eye India's funeral pyres","og_description":"Between\u00a050\u00a0and 60 million trees are consumed in\u00a0India&#8217;s 7 million open-air Hindu cremations\u00a0each year, worrying a group of environmentalists. The\u00a0traditional Hindu funeral pyre &#8212; an ancient ritual that goes back thousands of years &#8212; poses a threat to the living, says Mokshda or &#8220;Salvation,&#8221;\u00a0a Delhi-based non-governmental organization working to reduce the environmental impact of India&#8217;s funeral&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/environmentalists-eye-indias-funeral-pyres","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2011-09-19T20:32:50+00:00","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/environmentalists-eye-indias-funeral-pyres","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/environmentalists-eye-indias-funeral-pyres","name":"Environmentalists eye India's funeral pyres","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2011-09-19T20:32:50+00:00","dateModified":"2011-09-19T20:32:50+00:00","author":{"@id":""},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/environmentalists-eye-indias-funeral-pyres#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/environmentalists-eye-indias-funeral-pyres"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/environmentalists-eye-indias-funeral-pyres#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Environmentalists eye India&#8217;s funeral pyres"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/270"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7430"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7432,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7430\/revisions\/7432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}