FUNERALS in Hyndburn are set to go eco-friendly if councillors approve a scheme for green burials.
Members of the council's policy board will consider the proposals in the next six weeks and approval could open the way for people to be buried in shrouds or biodegradable coffins.
But first officials need to give relatives of those buried generations ago the chance to claim what is left of headstones removed between 1969 and 1974.
Hyndburn Council wants to follow the lead of Blackburn with Darwen Council, which opened a similar site at Pleasington Cemetery in July, joining more than 140 green burial centres nationwide.
The remains of the stones are cluttering up the two-acre site in Accrington Cemetery, on Burnley Road, earmarked for the green burials.
They were left there after a previous clearout at the cemetery and there are now mounds of them lying in pieces in what Coun O'Kane described as the "mother of all jigsaws."
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