Prior to the 1960s New Zealand had a number of active quarries sourcing granite, and marble for headstones, tombstones and memorial plaques.

The standard at the time was mostly to use a combination of a concrete footing with a granite plaque set in to the concrete, or to use a granite headstone set onto a concrete base.

It would seem in the 1960s New Zealand sourced granite or marble for headstones was considered a semi precious natural material. Very few headstones were completed constructed of granite as an excessive gesture and potential waste of natural resources, and it was also pretty hard yakka to craft each piece of granite into a headstone or memorial by hand. This was the time of skilled monumental masons in New Zealand, who would chip out the stone using basic tools pooring hours of skilled work into each headstone.

However it was from the 1950s that the importation of pre-manufactured granite headstones, tombstones and memorial plaques commenced. Over the next 10 to 15 years, the viability of local sourcing of natural NZ granite became impossible in the face of cheap imported granite mostly from Indian and Chinese quarries.

The headstone and memorial plaque trade in New Zealand also realized it was much cheaper to have these foreign granite headstones machined and hand carved in the source countries due to low wages and terrible work conditions.

The scene was set for where we are today. By the 1990s all working granite and marble quarries in NZ had been closed, monumental masons became importer sales people, sand engravers of lettering and installers. The skilled monumental masonry trade was lost to cheaper overseas skilled labour.

It is estimated that less than 5 in 100 headstones put into New Zealand cemeteries is now of New Zealand soil.

The environmental cost of our new headstone and memorial monument norm, is a carbon footprint equivalent to burning 11 million kilos of coal, or having 3 million single use plastic bags floating in our water.

The next time you are near a cemetery or Urupa, enjoying the tranquility of our natural open environments, feeling the Wairua of the place honoring people we loved and family, take a look and see if you can see anything other than imported granite and marble littering our land.

It will be imported headstones as far as your eyes can see. It is New Zealand secret and silent environmental and ethical shame! We are killing our planet to honour our dead!

And we ignore the human costs, the child labour, the slavery like work conditions and mortality rates in many quarries in other countries to maximize profit for some here in NZ.

There is no honour for our loved departed in a headstone that children were harmed or even killed in its procurement.

An ethical view that only starts from New Zealand Shores, when all the granite and marble for headstones is imported is not ethical st all.