How to bury waste, the green way

By Wena Alun Owen
BBC News

The treebog at Boduan Sanctuary Woods In pictures

If you go down to the woods today you're in for a big surprise... but a convenient one.

Well, actually not that big, but definitely unexpected, very useful and entirely environmentally friendly.

I've been sent to cover the opening of a "treebog", which for the uninitiated is a "green toilet" at a burial ground.

Opened two years ago on the Lleyn peninsula in Gwynedd, Boduan Sanctuary Wood offers an alternative final resting place.

If any fairies are looking for a new "des res" in Frochas Wood on the A499, four miles from Pwllheli, then the little hut used to house the toilet might well do the trick.

Made of wood - naturally - the little structure houses a tree feeder toilet.

It works simply enough. The shed housing the toilet is slightly raised, and the toilet stands above a chute at least a metre long topped with a conventional toilet seat.

The only difference is that there is no water to flush it - users simply scoop up a couple of handfuls of sawdust from a handy bin alongside and throw it down the chute.

I've noticed that when the graves are dug now the ground is full of tiny bluebell bulbs Arabella Melville, on the benefits of the natural burial ground

And yes, I did try it, and it was fine - not as cold as I'd imagined, and rather quiet without the water noise.

Everything lands in the ditch behind the shed where nature breaks it down and the surrounding trees "should grow very well indeed", according to Dr Arabella Melville.

The treebog even had a dignitary along for its official launch when Caernarfon MP Hywel Williams paid a visit on Friday to declare it open.

The wood is the brainchild of Dr Melville, who set up a charity, the Eternal Forest Trust, to buy the site after her partner Colin Johnson nearly died, and she realised there was nowhere he would have liked to be buried.

To date 12 people are buried there, along with five dogs, and a cat.

Money paid for plots is used to maintain the woods, and when all the 200 plots are sold, another wood will be purchased, so the process can start again.

Dr Melville believes the work done in the wood, apart from providing a stunningly different cemetery, has also benefited nature.

"I've noticed that when the graves are dug now the ground is full of tiny bluebell bulbs.

"I think they must have always been there it's just that now we are letting the light in they are growing again," she said.

Dr Arabella Melville outside the treebog

There are obviously like-minded people and a family from Glastonbury, Somerset, travelled to the site recently to bury a loved one.

Permission was not needed for the toilet structure, but health officials were contacted to make sure there were no sanitary issues.

Footpaths

"The ditch is blind, it does not connect to anything and it will all compost anyway.

"And if we do need to move it, the shed is on a platform so it can be moved," said Dr Melville.

Sanctuary Wood is being cleared by a group of volunteers, eight regulars, and about half a dozen who help as and when they can.

Finding the wood was not easy as there was a list of requirements.

"It took two years to find this place as it needed to be relatively dry, have road access, not be on a steep slope and not closer to a water course than 50 metres," said Dr Melville.

The wood is alive with the sound of birds singing, the only "modern" noise is that of cars and lorries as they pass, but after a while even they seem further away.

Although owned by the charity, which has a "cemetery licence" to bury people on the site, the wood is also open to the public to go for walks.

Wide footpaths make it accessible for wheelchair users, and the only visual evidence that it is a burial ground is flowers on a fresh grave, or a plaque or piece of slate with a name and a date on it.

Spruce trees are being removed to make way for species such as oak, spruce, rowan, chestnut, ash, silver birch and hawthorn.