Episode 19: Discussing Cremation with Barbara Kemmis of CANA
On this week’s episode, I am happy to share with you a conversation that I recently had with Barbara Kemmis, the Executive Director of the Cremation Association of North America, or CANA. CANA is one of the “big three” trade organizations in the death care services industry but it is the only one that focuses on cremation.
Cremation is on the rise in the United States. As Barbara will explain, after it was legalized in a handful of states in the 1870s, it took about a century for the cremation rate to hit 5% in this country. For the past several years, cremation has been a more popular option in the United States than burial, which represents a seismic shift in American disposition practices. Barbara and I will discuss the rising cremation rate, some of the reasons that people have been embracing cremation, and research conducted by CANA regarding correlations between demographic information and the cremation rate. I also ask Barbara about the environmental impacts of cremation and she shares some of the research that CANA has done in that area as well.
For more information about the statistics and research discussed in this episode, check out the following links:
Information about the Rooted and Roaming Demographics Research: https://www.
Link to all posts about statistics: https://www.
CANA 2018 Annual Statistics Report: https://www.
