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Looking at our graveyards and seeing the crassest way to commemorate a life

How extraordinary to think decomposing plastic could add beauty to the world

Letters to the Editor. Illustration: Paul Scott
The Irish Times - Letters to the Editor.
Thu Mar 26 2026 - 06:00 • 2 MIN READ

Sir, – How eloquently Ella McSweeny talked about how our graveyards could and should be, in last Saturday’s Weekend supplement (“Irish graveyards are full of plastic. We’re all paying for it”, March 21st).

The idea of using plastic flowers at a grave seems to be the crassest way possible to commemorate a life. We know that when we die, the body becomes a part of the natural world. How extraordinary to think decomposing plastic could in any way add beauty to that world.

Ella’s description of the plastic waste strewn around the 70-acre grave site was truly saddening, when such a place could be really beautiful.

I would ask readers to look up Skogskyrkogarden. This is a burial ground outside Stockholm set in a pine forest – not a Sitka spruce forest. The impression this wonderful place left on me many years ago remains. It is a place of beauty, tranquillity and peace, where nothing offends.

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There are no gaudy pictures, no plastic of any kind. There is a uniformity in the headstones, each one the same size and of the same material, so that the mind can be at rest. Two architects designed the buildings on the site, each adding to the beauty of the landscape.

As Ella says, everywhere we look we are confronted with plastic, yet how many of us query why it needs to be used? When I die, I hope it will not be from something connected to the ingestion of plastic and that my ashes will be buried somewhere man has not yet ruined. – Yours, etc,

Deirdre Davys,

Blackrock,

Co Dublin.

[ How do you resurrect a graveyard? Simply stop mowing the grass ]

Sir, – The superb article by the always informative Ella Mc Sweeney, in Weekend, this time on the pervasive plastic memorials in our graveyards that are poisoning our watercourses, wildlife and fish stock, is surely required reading for our county managers, planning officials and biodiversity officers.

It is also a wake-up call to all bereaved to consider alternatives to these highly toxic memorials, which are all too common in our burial grounds. – Yours, etc,

Seamus O’Brien,

Mullingar,

Co Westmeath.