According to oft-cited funeral industry statistics and confirmed by CANA’s research in 2022, at least one in five homes in America has a container with cremated human remains. In 2017, that included many households in the Albuquerque metro area. That’s why CANA Member Sunset Memorial Park, operated by French Funerals and Cremations, held its first-ever “Scatter Day” for people looking for a respectful way to inter the cremated remains of a loved one for free.

At the time, Chris Keller (Vice President of French Funerals-Cremations and Sunset Memorial Park from 2007 to 2021) said, “In a town like Albuquerque, you do the math: There’s 20 or 30,000 sets of cremated remains sitting in basements, in attics, on mantelpieces, under the bed, that are going to end up somewhere. And so many of them, we do know, end up in a landfill. And that breaks my heart.”

Keller said that as people who have kept cremated remains at home pass away themselves, “the caregiver or succeeding generations of family members who are cleaning out their home often find urns containing the remains, and are at a loss as to what to do with them.” Some, he said, “end up in garage sales or in a dumpster, and each year multiple urns are abandoned at Sunset Memorial Park by individuals who innately know they don’t belong in a landfill, but who also do not want them at home.”
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After Sunset Memorial’s inaugural scatter event in 2017, Keller reported he heard from funeral homes and cemeteries around the country—and even one in Australia—wanting to know how to stage their own similar events. “If everybody in the country starts doing this, then the conversation in the culture will change,” Keller said. “People will realize that it’s still a body, you still need to find a final resting place.”

CANA’s Cremation Memorialization research, conducted in 2022, focused on quantifying the number of human and pet cremated remains in US and Canadian households, specifically addressing what people plan to do with the ashes in their homes.

When we ask the general public who plan to be cremated what they want done with their ashes, roughly half respond, “Scatter me!” This has been validated over time with research conducted by other organizations. But do their ashes ultimately get scattered?

Our research doesn’t directly answer this question. However, given that 26% of US households and 19% of Canadian households have human ashes, it’s likely that they don’t all get scattered—or at least not right away.

The research study did provide important insights into consumer knowledge of permanent placement options.
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Among those who either have ashes in their home or who have been involved in cremation decisions for a loved one…

• Around a third say they are not at all or not very aware of the various permanent placement options available for a loved one’s ashes (30% US; 33% Canada).
• Over two thirds wish they knew more about the different permanent placement options for someone’s ashes (68% US; 68% Canada).
• Around half don’t know where to go to learn more about the different permanent placement options for someone’s ashes (53% US; 53% Canada).
• Only one-fifth consider scattering in a cemetery to be permanent placement (21% US; 20% Canada).
• Among those who have plans to relocate the ashes of a loved one currently in their home, around one-fifth plan to scatter the ashes in a cemetery (20% US; 18% Canada).

Bottom line: Satisfy consumer curiosity and promote your permanent placement options. Consider offering scattering and a variety of cremation products in your cemeteries!
Here’s what a few other CANA Members did:

Initially, my interest was piqued several years ago when I heard Chris Keller from Sunset Memorial Park in Albuquerque give a presentation at an ICCFA event describing their Scatter Day. “What a unique event,” I thought, and then filed it away as something that we should consider doing at Arlington when the time was right.

Flash forward to 2021, when we were continuing to witness, firsthand, a steeper climb in cremation. That’s when we decided to become active in encouraging our cremation consumers to consider final disposition and permanent memorialization at Arlington. Therefore, the time was right for a scatter day. However, we wanted a unique brand for our event and with the help of our advertising firm, we landed on “The Great Arlington Urn Return and Scatter Day.”

We understood from the very beginning that the ROI on this event was more than likely going to be nominal and simply accepted that fact. We also agreed from the beginning that we wanted to “put our best foot forward” and leverage the event as a “heritage developer” for the future. Consequently, our Urn Return & Scatter Day became an “all hands on deck” event with meticulous planning from intake of the cremated remains and verifying documentation to permit and authorize scattering, to providing convenient meeting areas to expedite the process, to enabling the surviving family members to participate in the actual scattering, and finally by providing celebrants to assist the family with their “goodbyes.”
As a result, there were numerous plaudits, ranging from “What a wonderful service you’re providing,” to “We’ve never been here before but it’s beautiful.” One consistent refrain was “We couldn’t afford anything more at the time.” That, of course, is one of the challenges that cremation poses to cemeteries and one of the reasons for Arlington to embrace events similar to Scatter Days in the first place.
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Daniel Applegate, President and CEO, has been with Arlington since 2001, initially serving as Vice President of Family Care until 2002 when the Board of Trustees appointed him as President. He currently serves as President and Chief Executive Officer, trustee of the Arlington Cemetery Association’s Board, President of the Arlington Funeral Home, and Chairman of the Arlington Funeral Home Board of Directors. Applegate served as secretary/treasurer of the Ohio Cemetery Association for several terms and one term as president. He has served a term on the Ohio Cemetery Dispute Resolution Commission and is a member of the International Cemetery, Cremation & Funeral Association (ICCFA). He has earned the designation as a Certified Cremation Specialist through the Cremation Association of North America (CANA). He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Colerain Chamber of Commerce.

Scattering day is something other practitioners in our field were doing and we thought that was a great idea and something we wanted to try out in our community. The genesis and implementation of this program in our company is credited to our marketing and community outreach team.

Our organization’s vision is “Everyone will be remembered, honored and memorialized at the end of life,” so, to fulfill this vision with families who were going to scatter, we decided to offer this option in our cemeteries. If people were going to scatter, why not give them an option to do that in our cemetery? Cemeteries are designed for permanent memorialization. This way we are helping realize our company vision.

This is well received by our families. Everyone seems gracious and thankful that we do offer this option. I had one family tell me that they just did not know what to do with their aunt’s remains till they saw our event being promoted on social media. What I have found is that the families who come to these events had no idea that scattering in a cemetery was an option.

We are in discussion about plans for our fifth year of the annual scattering day event. I anticipate this to be ongoing in the foreseeable future. In general, when families use our funeral home they do a have a free scattering option that is included in their cremation. So, throughout the year, our families do have a free scattering option separate from this specific event.
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Sandra Walker, Chief Operating Officer – Fairmount Memorial Association, began her career in Funeral Service in 1999. She is a licensed Funeral Director in Washington/Idaho. She also has a license to sell preneed insurance. Sandra is past president of the Washington Cemetery Crematory Funeral Association and current board member for CANA. In July 2022, along with eight other women in the death care space, Sandra created the Death Care Collective. The Collective’s mission is to create a safe space for women in the profession to feel supported and empowered and to be seen and heard. Sandra’s love for cremation began in 2005 when her mother was the first in the family to be cremated. She is passionate about all things cremation.

Ask any funeral director and he or she will tell you the same story plays out at their reception desk a few times each year. A middle-aged resident walks in holding a shopping bag and says, “My uncle just passed away and he had no children. I was cleaning out his house and found these urns on a shelf in his closet. I don’t want them in my house. What can I do with them?”

CANA’s 2022 Cremation Memorialization Research supports this. Nearly one in four U.S. households have human cremated remains in their homes. That’s 21.9 million families with parents, grandparents and extended family members who have not been memorialized in any permanent way. While around a quarter of these families have plans to relocate ashes outside their homes, many others have avoided conversations with loved ones about plans for their cremated remains and feel unprepared to make a decision. In addition, while the CANA study reveals that two in three respondents wish they knew more about permanent placement options, about half of these folks don’t know where to go to learn more.

To my mind, this CANA study says just one thing – there’s a tremendous opportunity for deathcare professionals to move cremation families from indecision to memorialization and permanent placement. Our Foundation Partners Group cemetery team has been working with our local funeral home and cemetery partners to reframe the discussion around permanent memorialization and the results are nothing short of amazing. Over the past five years, we have doubled the number of interments of cremated remains in our 22 cemeteries.
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How did we do it? It’s all about educating families, staying abreast of the latest products and trends, and thoughtful cemetery design. We’ll be sharing those strategies and tips next month at CANA’s 105th Cremation Innovation Convention. Please join me, our West Area Sales Manager Bryan Mueller and Dan Cassin, account executive for Merendino Cemetery Care from 10:30 – 11:30 a.m. on Friday, August 11 for our session, “Built to Last: How to Breathe New Life into Cemeteries.”

We encourage our teams to use every opportunity to discuss permanent memorialization. From our Foundation Partners cemetery pros, here are 10 tips to increase permanent memorialization awareness – and it’s just a preview of the useful information you’ll take away from our session:

1. Give cremation permanent memorialization information a prominent place on your website, in your arrangement space and in social media posts.
   
   
2. Design short videos, slideshows or animations showing various options for cremation memorialization and play them on a loop in your arrangement rooms and lobby.
   
   
3. Send regular emails to families you serve with relevant information, including grief resources, preplanning advice and options for permanent memorialization.
   
   
4. Discuss the negative aspects of keeping ashes at home, including possible damage, loss and chain of custody issues.
   
   
5. Reach out to cremation families multiple times following cremation to let them know it’s never too late to select a final resting place.
   
   
6. If your funeral home has a cemetery, have a cemetery advisor present to provide information and tours when families make immediate, imminent or preneed funeral arrangements.
   
   
7. Host special events year-round, including holiday commemorations and historic tours that give community members opportunities to visit the location and appreciate available options in a non-sales environment.
   
   
8. Reach out to veterans’ groups. Although honorably discharged veterans are entitled to placement in national veteran’s cemeteries, many have limited cremation options. Veterans placed in private cemeteries may be eligible to receive partial reimbursement for burial costs.
   
   
9. Actively seek testimonials from cremation families who selected permanent memorialization.
   
   
10. Look to partner with a cemetery design or memorial company to increase the number and quality of cremation memorialization options you can offer families.

Increasing permanent memorialization sales to cremation families is within reach of every independent funeral home and cemetery manager. We look forward to seeing you in Washington, D.C. and to sharing more useful information.