Don't bury or cremate – soon you may compost your corpse

There is a place like that near where I live in Canada, your remains gets transformed into a fertilizer and a small tree is planted right above it.

I already specified it in my will to go for such a solution or in the same vein, as long as it remain as eco-friendly as possible.

I really like the idea of having a tree with my name on it, instead of a tombstone.

There was a great article on nrk.no about how people are still not decomposed in their graves after 70 years: https://www.nrk.no/viten/xl/plassmangel-og-blaleire-gir-stor...

One example is clay. Burying in clay rich ground will slow decay because it limits the flow of air.

Another example is from the late 1950s where people would be buried in plastic wrap, to make the burial process more sanitary. They did this for 15-20 years. None of those bodies have decomposed much, but worse is that all the liquids are trapped inside the plastic :|

People are long-lived apex predators, wouldn't this have a heavy metal problem? Tuna and other apex predators tend to be dangerous to eat due to the buildup of pollutants inside them, and they don't live nearly as long or eat nearly as much as a human.

The introduction of cremation and the establishment of the first necropolis' in Paris (I think) and London was a huge social advance. Being able to talk openly and frankly about modes of interment, the recognition of a growing class of atheists, deists but not christians, a migrant population created many new states. London had a special railway line to the cemetary, and you got black-lined ticket to ride the coffin-train-hearse.

At times (from 1660s), to ensure the survival of the wool industry and raise taxes for the state, the shroud was a defined quantity of wool cloth, of a stated quality, which had to be sufficient to wrap the corpse like a Christmas cracker, tied head and toe. I like to imagine it was much like a farmer growing grapes destined for the wine-lake: you shear sheep, to make cloth, to wrap corpses, to earn taxes for the national economy.

I don't see why we can't get to the same kind of open-minded "why not" with composting. We've already had woven coffins, and the ending of routine embalming in many cultures. The liquid biological digester I find slightly more mechanistically worrying. Nobody talks about what you do with the fluids afterward (I think its using Lye or some other caustic solvent to dispose, and its not aiming to fertilize trees the way composting is)

In some places you can go for a 'natural' burial where you are minimally processed and simply placed in the ground in basically a natural material burial shroud.

In a lot of places, however, this is highly illegal and there are minimum requirements for burial (which can include embalming and/or a casket and/or a concrete and/or a burial vault which is basically a concrete sarcophagus that caskets go in).

Here in Indiana the only requirement is you have to be placed in a designated cemetery or graveyard 'within a reasonable time' however, pretty much every cemetery here requires a casket and a burial vault.

I used to bury people for a living and always found it so dumb, I'd have to excavate the grave, get chains under a vault and lift it with the backhoe, very slowly drive it out to the grave to prevent it swinging and cracking, lower it into the hole, go put the backhoe up, come back and jump down int he grave with a dust pan and get any dirt that fell into the vault and climb back out without knocking more in, cover it with a tarp and a piece of plywood then do prep an hour or so before the body was to arrive to have it ready for the graveside service.

Then... people would throw handfuls of dirt into the vault eyetwitch and after they left I'd remove all the fake grass and stuff, go get the small tractor, wrestle the vault lid into the front loader bucket, slowly drive out to the grave, wrestle it out of the bucket and get some straps on it, lift hte straps with the bucket and lower it down, let slack out slowly on one end to lower one side of the lid on, remove the straps, lower it more and then play 'don't crush my fingers' while I'm laying next to the grave trying to get the straps out without slamming the lid down and breaking it.

THEN I could put the dirt back and get back to cutting several acres of grass and walking around with a backpack full of diesel to weed eat while trying not to get sun poisoning again.

Man, do not miss that job.

Not naming the Recompose "Product" 'Soil-End Green' is a missed opportunity.

For those interested in the thermodynamics, composting generates heat and methane/CO2 emissions. If the composting object (body, trash, etc.) sufficiently disrupts the soil nutrient level (metal content, etc.), it becomes less suitable for healthy plant growth.

There is a growing debate as to whether it is better to incinerate (cremate) for energy generation/offsetting, because the output can be more effectively filtered/separated. (One must of course plant organic matter to offset CO2 output).

This is why many European countries incinerate their waste to reduce risk of disrupting the land.

I thought Muslims perform their burials in style of compost.

In Pakistan,

The dead body is wrapped in cloth shroud and the grave is dug six feet and is lined with concrete blocks (ground is bare Earth). Coffin is not used. The body is laid in the grave then if I remember correctly, grave is covered partially (25% - 33%?) with soil and then thick concrete/stone slabs are placed on top to cover the grave. After that, the grave is covered with mound of Earth.

I personally want to be interred in a mushroom infused burial suit [0]. The idea of going back to the progenitor fungal network really comforts me actually.

[0] - https://coeio.com/coeio-story/

Given the dwindling space for burials:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bisnow/2017/11/03/urban-cemeter...

and the energy/greenhouse gas emission costs of cremation, I can see this taking off.

There's a picture and caption not discussed in the text:

> Katrina Spade, upper left, the founder and CEO of Recompose, a company that hopes to use composting as an alternative to burying or cremating human remains, looks on Tuesday, May 21, 2019, as Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, centre, signs a bill into law at the Capitol in Olympia, Wash., that allows licensed facilities to offer "natural organic reduction," which turns a body into soil in a span of several weeks. (Ted S. Warren/AP Photo)

Was Spade involved in bringing that legislation about?

Or be eaten: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-7383903/How-... [warning: Daily Mail]

My will specifies above-ground consumption by insects, followed by a clear urethane casting resin ossuary.

It also specifies cats-eye cubic zirconium retroreflectors in the eye sockets of the skull. It gives me a little thrill to imagine being discovered in a storage unit 200 years from now and creeping someone out because they saw the eyes glow from their flashlight.

Having a little trouble finding 25 mm diameter spheres of cubic zirconium, though, so I can't die yet. I can get a big chunk of it and maybe cut that down in a lathe, but I'd almost rather buy 5mm beads and make an array.

I would love to know how this process compares to simple burial in a wicker basket or something like that. I always assumed that decomposition in soil, without any embalming chemicals or hardwood coffin, would be about as natural as decomposition would get.

I guess the compost from this process would be of higher quality, but compared to burying your loved one in a machine where they have to decompose for a few weeks, I think returning them straight to the earth would feel better for the relatives.

Reminds me of Record of a spaceborn few, a book by Becky Chambers.

It goes into detail how on a generation ship the bodies are composted and become nutrients to grew new food upon.

In David Weber's Honor Harrington series, the original settlers of one of the planets (Grayson) found the soil was too polluted with heavy metals that they needed to create purified soil of their own for growing food. So amongst other things they buried people in their gardens, though by the time of the stories, they had transitioned away from being food gardens.

Personally, I'm an organ donor and donating my body to science. I don't care what happens to it when I'm gone.

This has been done over centuries, and is still standard in Europe, where the embalming fad never has caught on.

Soon? Looks like someone's ahead of the curve:

http://www.hngnews.com/lodi_enterprise/article_37e5f4bf-f699...

I completely agree with this method - I’ve just opted to be put in a faux coffin filled with my body and 100lbs of explosives. That should take care of “scattering my remains”.

Seems like a definite “slam bang” finish to whatever my life amounts to.

I wonder if is the beginning of an industry where you can sign your body away to be used as fertilizer, with the proceeds going to your estate.

Opens up some grim possibilities though.

I wonder if this has happened in the past, we just don't have archaeological records of it because the bodies have been composted?

While composting has a lot of benefits, I would be very sad to attend a friend's burial if they were to be composted. Feels like a disrespectful way to let someone go.

I'm also concerned about disease transmission. Cows' diseases may not necessarily affect us but humans' certainly will. The need to disinfect kinda defeats the purpose (pollution with chemicals)

Hope about we just compost other things and let human bodies be

Actually quite interesting and one of the most sensible things I have heard in a long time, you know , our maker had sustainability in mind when creating us, we are the ones who chose otherwise.

Cool idea

I can't help but think of the movie How High.

You mean, bury. If you bury a corpse, without embalming it and doing funny things to it, it rots like everything else.

I thought we are all worm food

finally