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Composting of human remains
Jeroen
Luminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlands Veteran
It seems this is finally becoming legal in Washington State, and there is a company called Recompose lined up to become the first mortuary where you can have your body composted after your death. It costs about $6k, which is pretty good compared to the cost of a traditional burial.
Doesn’t it sound nice to not waste all that energy and generate a ton of carbon dioxide, and instead end up using your remains to grow roses or a nice tree somewhere. The process apparently involves burying you in straw and wood chips for six weeks and turning regularly, and that will decompose the body including the bones into soil suitable for use in a garden. Total energy use is about one eighths of that of cremation.
Sign me up, sounds a perfect way to go.
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Yes, I've been on their mailing list for 2 years... I'm waiting for them to come to the UK, which apparently, they have plans to do, as we have slightly less land available than the USA...
Definitively the way to go. Maybe in the future graveyards could become gigantic parks enrichened by our remains. Even though graveyards have their aesthetic appeal (and socio-cultural bond, which will be the hardest to gnaw off), this is quite a pragmatic and eco-friendly alternative.
I was unaware you died ... 🤪
I am emptying my compost bin if you require somewhere quick ...
Here to help
Remembering science papers that I've read in the past listing the concentrations of heavy metals and salts (not to mention end of life medications) left behind in human remains that were pretty detrimental to plant growth, I decided to google it and was surprised by the diversity of view on the subject. It reads much like the cigarette health controversies of old where many businesses having large financial stakes in this subject were very selective in what science research info they focused on and which they minimized.
Liking the idea of a sky funeral, I would like it to be widely known that I am prepared to just pay to have my body dropped from a very high altitude onto the property of a the last F-wit that has annoyed me.
And if my version of a sky funeral (my apologies to Tibetans) actually caught on, not only might the dispersal of human remains become wider and more judicial but just imagine how many folks might actually get treated more respectfully in their twilight years.
I wonder why the remains of humans are more detrimental for plants than other animals remains?
Being embalmed and buried in a treated coffin doesn’t strike me as particularly chemical-free. In different processes the chemicals go through different transformations, in cremation a lot of the material is released as smoke, so pollution. In natural decomposition into compost there is also a fair bit of heat released and there are some intense chemical processes. I’ve not looked into it in any great depth, but it seems to me that composting has the edge.
@Jeffrey
That's a good point.
They used to say the remains of an average human contains around 1 cup of salts. Salt in that quantity is what the Romans used to punitively use to destroy an enemies future crop growing potential. Human remains are also reported to have high ph levels like lime. When mixed up with enough earth it's not a problem for plants but when not widely
enough dispersed through the soil, it burns plants like raw fertilizer will.
In the analysis of chemical & metallic toxins it would be interesting to compare the compositional differences between urban & rural lifestyles with both humans and animals. If there are wide differences between human and animal chemical remains, how much of that from is from lifestyle, or food preferences?
I often think a toxin for a plant or an animal is simply anything that we absorb more of than we can release.
We could give our buddies (body buddies that is) to science ... which usually means we are dissected by medical students ...
If you investigate the company, they have done masses of research into making sure the body decomposes safely. This is a project that has been in the pipeline for a good many years. During that time, the Company has investigated and researched the best possible method of composting a human body safely.
I can't go into precise data. I am not a scientifically-minded individual, but I do know, if they're opening centres globally, it's probably a safe bet - it's a safe bet.
I didn’t know they were going global, I will go and get on their email list.
I had my father cremated for about $600 and then scattered his ashes in a park, near the lake. My father, sad to say, loved nature and hated people.