Without fail, the conversations we have with the subjects of our Connecting Directors features always remind us why this profession matters—and why it must continue to evolve. That was certainly the case when we spoke with Darren Crouch, founder of Passages International, following the news that he had been named to the TIME 100 Climate list. Yes, that list—the one that includes heads of state, global financiers, the King of England, and even the Pope.
“I’m still pinching myself,” Crouch told me. “I couldn’t believe it was actually happening.”
A hard secret to keep
His inclusion came after a journalist researching the Green Burial Council interviewed him about the environmental impact of funerals. A few weeks later—just days before the NFDA Convention—he learned he’d made the list.
“They told me on the Thursday or Friday before NFDA,” he said, adding that he had to keep quiet until the list was published. When it finally went public, the honor led him to Brazil during the same week as major global climate gatherings tied to COP30 Summit and Prince William’s Earthshot Prize.
“It was really, really inspiring just to be there,” he said, surrounded by policymakers, investors, and sustainability leaders from around the world.
Preservation vs. sustainability
What is most striking, though, was not the glamour of the recognition, but why Crouch was recognized in the first place. His work highlights one of the hardest truths facing the deathcare profession: conventional funerals, as we have historically practiced them, are not environmentally sustainable.
“Conventional funerals historically in this country have been about preservation,” Crouch said. “We embalm the body so it doesn’t decompose… It’s all about preservation. But that’s not how Mother Nature intended this thing to work. We take from the earth our whole lives — whether it’s the water that we drink, the air that we breathe, or the food that we eat — and then when we die, we say, ‘Screw you—you can’t have anything back.’”
Green burial and more thoughtful cremation practices offer a different philosophy—one rooted in returning, rather than entombing. Natural burial, biodegradable urns, clean-burning cremation containers, and sustainable caskets allow families to make what Crouch called “our final, last decision… a sustainable, renewable, powerful, meaningful decision.”
Practical solutions to an urgent issue
The urgency goes beyond values; it’s also practical. Many communities are running out of cemetery space. Cremation rates are still steadily on the rise, if slowly. Yet, as Crouch pointed out, deathcare often treats cremation as a transactional afterthought.
“We cremate a body, we give people the remains, and it’s like, ‘Good luck. Go figure it out,’” he said. “If we did the burial equivalent, it would be like embalming a body and saying, ‘Good luck—go figure it out.’”
That gap is one reason Passages launched its Etern.Life memorialization platform, which allows families who scatter cremated remains to geolocate the scattering site and create an online memorial. It offers something cremation families often lack: a place to return, reflect, and remember.
“We have to go where the consumer is,” Crouch said. “The consumers are already here. We need to get on board or get off the bus.”
That means acknowledging the demand for scattering, green burial, and cleaner cremation—and creating services around them rather than resisting them.
Being named to the TIME 100 Climate list may be a personal milestone for Darren Crouch, but it’s also a signal to the deathcare profession. The world is paying attention to how every industry, including deathcare, impacts the planet. Green options are no longer fringe—they are central to remaining relevant, ethical, and economically viable.
