Oregon has legalized human composting | Hacker News Reader

Oregon has legalized human composting

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269 pointselsewhen233 comments

My mother passed away a few weeks ago. It was her wish to go with Recompose. She was a master gardener, and to her, the idea of returning to the ecosystem was so much better than cremation or a cemetery. Through Recompose, her 'soil' will be donated to a reforesting project.

As you can imagine, I've ruminated a lot on this lately. What's the purpose of a tombstone, or a plaque, or an urn full of ashes? To memorialize, or to honor someone who is gone? I don't need a monument for that. I spent a couple of hours yesterday propagating roses with my six-year old daughter, her grand-daughter. That's a better way to honor my mother, I think, and she would agree.

As old-world tradition and religiosity fade, we can all find our own new ways to do these things. This is 'meaning-making', an interesting term I learned recently.

Incidentally, her gardening buddies were intrigued to learn about human composting. I think Recompose is going to be big.

I'm sorry for your loss. I got a lot out of reading this comment and I appreciate that you shared it.

I walk around a cemetery as part of my daily walk when I let my mind wander. Two big topics in my town are real estate and reconciliation with aboriginal people. Something about this giant plot of land covered in European names just seems so strange.

I fully agree with you mother, may she rest in peace.

I have been thinking as well, what if after passing away of a family member we plant their favorite fruit tree with them. After generations there will be a beautiful garden.

People usually laugh at this idea; maybe rightfully so, but there is something profound in it about feeding the plants and by proxy animals and fellow people who fed us.

For one, tombstone cannot lead to prion desease.

I really doubt that anyone is going to get prions from composted human remains used in a reforesting project.

With respect to graves especially, they are an archeological treasure trove.

If in the far far future we develop a means of resurrecting the dead, the epitaphs on tombstones may be used to determine who deserves resurrection. But of course this is extremely fanciful speculation.

> If in the far far future we develop a means of resurrecting the dead, the epitaphs on tombstones may be used to determine who deserves resurrection. But of course this is extremely fanciful speculation.

That's unlikely unless the dead person is exceptionally well-preserved (or you're just creating Generic Human Body #42 and giving it the dead person's name). Brain structure doesn't really survive current burial/embalming techniques and I imagine that any sort of "immortal soul" may have long left by then. Cryonics aims for this sort of far-future resurrection, but even it has problems about viability.

I was thinking more along the lines of technology that can scan back through time, and record a person's neural patterns at the point of death. This would require being able to open at least observation-only portals through time, or that there exist some high-fidelity natural recordings of events on Earth encoded in some substrate in the universe, that last millions of years, and that are high-resolution enough to enable full copying of the past state of a human brain, that one day humanity could recover.

How such a feat could be accomplished, I don't know, but capabilities that seem impossible today may become possible with millions of years of technological progress, especially if the exponential phase of technological progress continues for a while longer.

Thanks for writing this. My mother is a master gardener also, and I'm curious how she feels about this option, so now I'll go find out. I doubt she's heard of it, but I can't imagine her views will differ from those of your mother.

I think in some ways, a monument helps people compartmentalize the loss in a literal way: there's a place they can go to visit, mourn, remember, etc. I imagine many people struggle with this in some form.

I knew someone who drove around for years with a friend's ashes in a jar ("the copilot") before eventually spreading them somewhere scenic.

Roses are indeed a fine monument.

Some religions take a similar tact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Silence

Islam also doesn't treat bodies with preservative. Generally now people are buried at most in a wooden coffin. It's somewhat modern that we have coffins made of processed wood and are able to preserve dead people

"Recompose, the country’s first human composting funeral home does it like this: a corpse is placed in a cylinder with organic materials, like wood chips, plants, and straw, then heated and turned repeatedly for several weeks with a hook until it’s broken down into a nutrient-rich soil that can be delivered back to the family or used for planting."

Every time I read about using human corpses to produce soil, I recall this article:

"Grass plants bind, retain, uptake and transport infectious prions"

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4449294/

In the past I read about this or similar startup and they mentioned that they don't accept corpses of people diagnosed with prion diseases. IMHO, this is not enough. For example, a person with early CJD could die of other cause and never be diagnosed. Besides that, sporadic CJD isn't as rare as "1 per million" (still rare though).

Here is an interesting video about prion diseases that, among other things, discusses epidemiology ("1 in 7000 US deaths"):

"Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease and Other Prion Diseases - Brian Appleby, M.D."

https://youtu.be/4vyuby6gibs?t=328

Testing of corpses based on Protein Misfolding Cyclic Amplification (PMCA) might come in handy (if it's not too expensive). It is claimed to be very sensitive. Here is presentation by Dr. Rodrigo Morales (one of the authors of the article about prion uptake by plants that I linked above):

"Texas CWD Symposium: Pre-symptomatic prion detection"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8ZX8sHAPUw

P.S.: Hopefully, this eco-burial fad wouldn't catch on. How about deep sea burials?

I hope when it's time for me, I can simply be flushed down the drain:

> Alkaline hydrolysis is also used in the agricultural industry to sterilize animal carcasses that may pose a health hazard, because the process inactivates viruses, bacteria, and prions

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkaline_hydrolysis_(body_disp...

I'd like a sky burial in Tibet, but that ain't gonna happen (at least not legally) unless things change.

Paying your respects to the vultures? That is quite romantic.

You could move to Tibet in order to have it eventually, though.

It can be done in India in some places if you convert toa Zoroastrian.

Vultures are endangered in India. The Towers of Silence are having trouble dealing with bodies.

You would be dead and wouldn't be able to enjoy it.

I spent a bit of time on Recompose’s site a couple of months back out of curiosity. One of the things that stuck out to me was that there were stipulations regarding a person’s medical records. The presence of prion diseases or hepatitis were listed as reasons one could be rejected by Recompose, among other illnesses.

I want to say they’re aware of the issue, but when I went back to look for this info today I couldn’t find it. So unfortunately you’ll have to take this with a grain of salt.

I just posted this on another comment, but it turns out the Zoroastrians had a solution for this, which still allows the body to be recycled naturally. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Silence

I wonder what is the risk of prions diseases.

> A 68 kg (150 lbs) body which contains 65% water will require 100 MJ of thermal energy before any combustion will take place. 100 MJ is approximately equivalent to 3 m3 (105 ft3) of natural gas, or 3 liters of fuel oil (0.8 US gallons). Additional energy is necessary to make up for the heat capacity ("preheating") of the furnace, fuel burned for emissions control, and heat losses through the insulation and in the flue gases.

> As a result, crematories are most often heated by burners fueled by natural gas. LPG (propane/butane) or fuel oil may be used where natural gas is not available. These burners can range in power from 150 to 400 kilowatts (0.51 to 1.4 million British thermal units per hour).

>Crematories heated by electricity also exist in India, where electric heating elements bring about cremation without the direct application of flame to the body.

>Coal, coke, and wood were used in the past, heating the chambers from below (like a cooking pot). This resulted in an indirect heat and prevented mixing of ash from the fuel with ash from the body. The term retort when applied to cremation furnaces originally referred to this design.

More eco-friendly option would be to use pellet or electricity.

Since prions are found abundantly in the head, just bury or lock away the skulls and treat them like nuclear waste. Compost or cremate the rest of the body.

This is a solved problem! My startup is building modern, cutting-edge catacombs where we're redefining what it means to have a huge, underground maze full of decomposing human heads.

I think your funding should primarily come from Kickstarter, I think that there will be very few lawsuits of people who want to deposit their skull.

Dark humor

I have no idea if this is true or not... and that worries me.

I think it's not, but, maybe?

It's just another Catacombs of Paris, which to be fair has stagnated, so maybe a new agile startup can do better.

It really is ripe for disruption. Will need significant upfront capital infusions, though, and really the ultimate play is on the cloud or possibly blockchain which has some bootstrapping issues. Watching this space closely.

Great! Legacy underground mazes full of decomposing human heads are such a pain.

Catacombs as a Service is really going to take off.

I am in a similar market, but we are turning cadavers into headless server platforms.

Are your digital cants to the omnissiah iso-9001 compliant too?

Alcor will do this for $80,000/head, are your prices competitive?

> cutting-edge

missed opportunity or subtlety mastery ?

Sounds like a civilized thing to do. Just hack off the head and store it in some permanent disposal site. Then a few centuries later our ancestors will have to move the nuclear waste because of some leakage and will dig up the skulls.

Clearly a savage had lived there amongst the nuclear barrels. Its mind altered by the radiation, chopping off those poor worker heads.

If it wasn't clear: /s

And yes prions might be dangerous but what you propose seems out of proportion.

Now hold on, I think you're on to something. We still haven't solved how to communicate the dangers of nuclear waste to our descendants several millenia from now. What better warning than thousands and thousands of skulls piled around the hazmat?

There are already things like the Skull Chapel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skull_Chapel that are basically tourist traps because of having a bunch of skulls.

Radioactive prions. It’s like chocolate and peanut butter.

You could also put them in a jar and start a museum with them.

Actually putting in into nuclear waste solves the problem forever

>> fuel oil (0.8 US gallons) > eco-friendly

For people who drove cars.. mostly a (once-in-a-lifetime) symbolical gesture.

It's more gallons than I'll probably use in my lifetime - I've driven maybe five miles in total when debating going for a drivers test and I'm now in my mid-thirties.

if you only count the amount you have driven in the drivers seat sure, but you have used far far more. You were inevitably a passenger be it in a car, bus train, plane, ship, etc... then there is the fuel used to transport everything you have ever bought. Starting with raw material extraction involving heavy machinery and then at each point on from there in transit between factories and warehouses until it ends up as a finished product at the store or delivered to your door. every step involved a internal combustion engine burning hydrocarbons.

Prions are scary, but the fact that prions have presumably existed for just as long as life has existed on Earth, there must be something that keeps prions from replicating out of control and causing mass death and extinctions.

Let's hope that that "something" wasn't smaller populations.

It does make one wonder about oral traditions of 'cursed' lands...

There were smaller populations of humans, but not smaller populations of mammals in general.

With our skill at making meat, I wonder how true that is.

Bison are much better at making meat than we ever were, before we all but wiped them out. Google piles of bison skulls for a peek.

I think the comparison is hard more than it is obvious. There's an awful lot of humans, pets and livestock.

A quick google search shows around 5 billion goats, cows, pigs, and sheep, 1.5 billion cats and dogs, and 8 billion humans.

Compared to an estimated 130 billion wild mammals. That’s without the vast herds of herbivores that used to roam the plains of the world.

Something like 100 billion people have died in the last 50k years, and it doesn't really seem like prions from their corpses have been a problem.

It could be, because cultures that were using human bodies, instead of burning or burying them, went extinct.

> Prehistory of endocannibalism controversy Whether or not endocannibalism was commonplace through much of human prehistory remains controversial.

A team led by Michael Alpers, a lifelong investigator of kuru,[14] found genes that protect against similar prion diseases were widespread, suggesting that such endocannibalism could have once been common around the world.[15][16]

A genetic study with a range of authors published by the University College London in 2009 declared evidence of a "powerful episode" of natural selection in recent humans. This evidence is found in the 127V polymorphism, a mutation which protects against the kuru disease. In simpler terms, it would appear the kuru disease has affected all humans to the extent we have a specialised immune response to it.[17] However, a study drawing from hundreds of resources in 2013 claims further that 127V derives from an ancient and wide spread cannibalistic practice, not related to kuru specifically, but "kuru-like epidemics" which appeared around the time of the extinction of the neanderthals who co-existed with humans. This allows the suggestion that cannibalistic practises may have caused diseases which killed the neanderthals, but not the humans because of the 127V resistance gene.[18]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocannibalism

>The earliest known reference to a requirement for a six-foot burial occurred in 1665 during the Great Plague of London. John Lawrence, the Lord Mayor of London,[13] ordered that the bodies of plague victims "...shall be at least six foot deep." The city officials apparently believed this would inhibit the spread of the disease, not realising that the true vector was fleas living on rats in the streets.

"there must be something that keeps prions from replicating out of control"

Do you feel like we should roll the dice? If we roll a 6, it could be worse that the Plague and Covid combined

Or a big friggin fresnel lens.

This would be a spectacular way to go! Well, post-go.

a post-go go

Set up one of those thermal solar power plants that are like a sea of mirrors and a tower with a boiler on top, then raise the body in a cage on a winch to the top.

"Head towards the light".

That would be a specular way to go.

In Iain M. Banks' Culture series, customarily, a ship Mind displaces (teleports) your body to the center of the nearest star on death. That way your atoms contribute to the star and will eventually rise to the surface and spread through the universe. Also takes care of prion diseases.

Sound's like Orholam's Glare from the Lightbringer series.

What does any of this have to do with prions though? If anything, the emissions are probably worse from a public health perspective.

Cremation will destroy prions. Composting will not. I guess the issue would be with prions from a composting brain getting into food supply.

I’m not sure how real of a concern this is as deer with CWD die and decompose and I’m not aware of any transmission in this way.

I was of the impression that Prions are notoriously impervious to heat. They were said to withstand typical disinfecting protocols using an autoclave (250°F for 15-20min). Quick source:

> To destroy a prion it must be denatured to the point that it can no longer cause normal proteins to misfold. Sustained heat for several hours at extremely high temperatures (900°F and above) will reliably destroy a prion.

https://dwr.virginia.gov/wildlife/diseases/cwd/what-are-prio...

I don't know the specific temperature profile of cremation, but I doubt it is sufficient.

Cremation actually goes well above that. Cremation happens around 1400-1800F.

https://www.cremationresource.org/cremation/how-is-a-body-cr...

You’re right that it withstands heat, but not cremation heat.

Autoclaves are meant to destroy living material while preserving what's being sanitized, while cremation intends to destroy everything and preserve nothing. For that reason, there's a difference in both temperature and exposure times.

900°F is barely temperature of a campfire

More eco-friendly is direct burial into the soil, I guess

Recompose, the country’s first human composting funeral home does it like this: a corpse is placed in a cylinder with organic materials, like wood chips, plants, and straw, then heated and turned repeatedly for several weeks with a hook until it’s broken down into a nutrient-rich soil that can be delivered back to the family or used for planting.

It's like what the mafia used to do to dissolve bodies

This description seems unpleasant, especially the hook part. I expect they need some better description that doesn’t involve people picturing themself or their loved ones being torn up by a hook.

I didn’t even consider that as a possible interpretation. I thought of the hook as a crank to turn the cylinder. But now you have me questioning which is correct?

I personally pictured something similar to the dough hook attachment on my stand mixer

This earlier article is less ambiguous,

> Over the next 30 days, naturally-occurring microbes—and a few turnings with a tool similar to a dough hook—break the body down.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/93wmd5/the-first-us-funeral-...

That's pretty interesting. Does leave me with a different opinion on the service. Not sure if good/bad, just different.

Edit: after a few minutes of thought, I definitely like this less. Imagining my body like a pair of shoes banging around in the dryer or torn to shreds is not a great thought. In a way it's irrational. I don't think of cremation as my body in an inferno even thought that's what it is. I've always liked the idea of just having myself tossed in a hole and a tree planted over me. I've done this with my late dogs and it's always a joy to revisit the tree even after (especially after) years past. Gives me a feeling they are there still. It's odd but such is life, and death.

It sure ruins the illusion of "being at peace". Laying there and just slowly fading away? Peaceful. Getting stirred up so you break down faster? Ick.

I'll probably get over it but I had a similar visceral reaction.

I don't think the bodies will mind. I know mine won't when I'm gone. Sure some particularly squeemish family members might have an issue with it but as long as it's in the deceased's will, and they entrusted the right person as executor of estate, it shouldn't be a problem.

If it's legal by the time my clock is up I'd like a "burial" where they just throw my body into a forest and let nature take its course, but that one's probably gonna take a lot longer to be legal because of the worry that like, a coyote will drag an arm or something into a populated area. Previously my plan was to have my ashes pressed into a vinyl record of my music and distributed among friends and family but now this is a pretty appealing prospect.

Anyone interested in eco-death is probably well aware of this youtube channel but if not you should check this out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWo2-LHwGMM

The mental health of grieving loved ones seems like a reasonable thing to consider when selecting how handle one's remains.

My loved ones love me and know what I want. I can't speak for anyone else.

Yes, that is not great marketing copy.

But I suspect that if people knew what "embalming" means, they'd be squeamish about that as well.

...

I was present for a cremation sale where the funeral director explained that they fire the body, then collect any metals (titanium screws etc) and sell them for scrap.

This bothered me, but I can't say (still to this day) whether it was because it seemed way too graphic for the average bereaved family member, or if I was just offended that the crematorium thought it was OK to sell other peoples' property.

Could be worse. Check out this hog composting:

https://youtu.be/U9kw0A9_oCM

I doubt this helps put your concerns to rest, but some composting toilets use a manually cranked stirrer to mix the fecal matter with the existing compost materials.

See Nature's Head, for instance.

For anyone disturbed by the thought of a body being turned with a hook, consider who that person is since they died. My perspective is that they’re a memory in whoever remembers. They have lasting impacts to varying degrees. Now they are a collection of elements, much of which supports many other living things. I care that the body is processed in a way towards most ecological reciprocity, whatever that may be for that region of the world.

Treating our dead with respect is probably one of the oldest signs of human culture. People care a lot about the bodies of their deceased loved ones. See Antigone by Sophocles. You're welcome to your views, but most people have strong, deeply felt emotions and opinions on how dead bodies should be properly handled.

Things like this, though, show that those attitudes are changing. Not rapidly, and certainly not in a majority of people, but they are indeed changing.

If this seems disrespectful, then I encourage you to look into what the embalming process actually entails, as (IMO) it's worse: https://youtu.be/B5-NtLmKUDE?t=201

Mummification is even worse than that, but it had a perceived benefit for its proponents.

I respect the bodies, and the land, water, air, and other bodies that made them, which is why I prefer my remnants be digested by microbes with minimal resource-cost so long as it is safe enough for the land. We’re so spoiled with luxuries like embalming and fancy boxes. Abstraction layers may still feel like respect, but they distance us from the core of survival, which is the health of the other living things here. How can we shift our strong, deeply-felt emotions around dead bodies?

Your phrasing is very interesting: "consider who that person is since they died." It's interesting because you refer to the dead person in the present tense, "who it is," not "who it was". Yet, in the following sentence you say "they are a collection of elements." Even when attempting to state "cold hard facts," we cannot help but exhibit our humanity, and it's a reminder why we should treat the dead with respect. In my opinion, being alive is more than just a collection of atoms and the interactions between them. And in death, while the electrons stop moving in that particular way that made us alive, that "something special" still remains in the form of their memory.

That was intentional, nodding to the dead living on in living memory.

I’m okay with the spark of life being a result of a collection of stuff and the interactions amongst it all.

I treat the dead with respect because I’m my own panopticon.

I mean, why do all this theater when there is a much better long lived and respected tradition: Burial-at-Sea. Roughly 60% of the US pop lives within a 100 miles of a seacoast.

Wrap them in something organic for presentation, a weight stone, then, go out to sea (with family along option -others may be ok with remote video) and let them slip into the ocean like sailors buried at sea.

No creepiness, no vicarious cannibalism via eating veggies nourished by uncle Vinnie or aunt Mathilda or anything.

Traditional burial-at-sea.

As someone who lives in the middle of the United States, shipping my body out to the closest ocean for burial and flying family out to witness my burial doesn't seem very practical.

We have inland seas. The Great Lakes are vast and they can be barged out to sea (we’d need agreements with Canada; but feasible)

It may not be cost effective for some... but a large percentage (~60%) of the US pop live within a 100 miles from seashores...

My understanding is that the EPA does not allow you to dump human corpses in lakes. You also need to go >3 miles out to sea. https://www.epa.gov/ocean-dumping/burial-sea

Some entity was also probably not okay with composting bodies in your backyard —till this.

In California you can’t bury a corpse in your backyard either. But in most states you can.

I wonder how big of a trebuchet you’d need to launch a body 3 miles.

I don't even know if that's possible. 3 miles is a long way, and bodies are squishy and... easy to separate, relative to a rock or bullet.

The speed you would need to get that far might be high enough for the force to tear off limbs or to shred the skin. The chances of you getting a permit after you put "might rain human limbs or remains on the beach" is very low.

You'd probably have better luck with little solar-powered, GPS-guided dinghys or kayaks that can go out 3 miles, drop the body and come back.

Lake Superior is perpetually cold and near-sterile when you get deep enough. Not the greatest place if you want bodies to decompose.

What are the energy costs of transporting a body from inland out onto the ocean? Probably less than cremation I suppose. Still, with some slight modifications I think you could improve efficiency. Load the bodies into shipping containers, to take advantage of all that existing logistics infrastructure, then push the whole container over the side once the container ship is an appropriate distance from shore. You can even tell families that Vinnie and Mathilda have become an artificial reef.

Another pandemic, but this time with the Plague? No, please no shipping containers

Every year every person in US produces >10 tons of CO2, any energy required for their body disposal is irrelevant.

How about burial in a volcano? All natural cremation.

That could be an option for Hawai’i!

Parts of the body will decompose at different rates, so it won't be long before parts of the body will detach from the part that is weighted down. 7,000 people in the US die every day, 2.6 million a year. Random body parts from millions upon millions of corpses quickly find their way onto beaches everywhere, to the delight of sunbathers.

Was that reported around Leyte gulf and areas where thousands perished at sea? It may be a concern, but I’m not sure.

It's definitely a thing even without combat areas: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salish_Sea_human_foot_discov...

So if you scale up from the relatively small numbers of people who die (and whose bodies aren't recovered) by accident or suicide near/in water, it's probably reasonable to expect a lot more of this. Maybe your idea is workable if you go far enough out that any detached remnants are grabbed by the big oceanic gyres.

Or if the people buried at sea aren’t wearing anything too buoyant, such as sneakers.

I don't know about the WWII case, but in countries like the UK where it is legal to be buried at sea there are regulations about where you can perform the ceremony specifically because bodies do drift: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-guernsey-24224570

Although the article mentions that this is the first time it's happened in 25 years, note that only about a dozen people every year choose to be buried in this way: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-38210497

Well... Would be more like crepiness on steroids, "final dungeon boss level".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owKFlNU_T5w

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7t1WguYJyE

I’m down with a “Viking funeral”. Yes, I know that the Vikings didn’t actually float their dead out to sea on perfectly good boats that were set on fire, but it’s still a cool idea.

Wow, the whole process only takes several weeks?

A simple backyard compost will go through chicken bones quite well once it gets going. I'm not surprised an optimized process can take care of a whole body in a matter of weeks.

I believe that there was someone in the Mafia whose procedure was not unlike the modern lye hydrolysis methods -- heat, pressure, and a basic solution. Rendering took only hours, supposedly, an efficient method of Llupara bianca.

This is abhorrent, as if it was taken unironically out of a dystopian science fiction novel.

Decomposition is a natural process that happens to any corpse. It does not need to be optimized. That said, it does not need to be slowed down with embalming either.

It actually is used in at least one sci fi novel, although not at all dystopian, Becky Chambers 3rd wayfarer novel: Record of a spaceborn few. I read the first 3 and highly recommend them, the world (universe?) building is wonderful, and the characters are sympathetic and well written. I'm saving the next one for when I next feel down, there's only 5, don't want to finish them too soon!

What do they do with the skeleton?

I always remember Cardinal Newman instructing for a load of compost to be dumped on top of his coffin to prevent there being anything to dig up and sanctify. They still tried a hundred years later but all they found was a brass plaque and earth...

Seems like an impressive timescale to remove all the bone too.

An active compost pile can consume an animal carcass of any size, bones and all, in the 60-90 days. This is the way nature recycles resources and she has gotten very good at it over the eons.

Huh, he was also sainted by the church. Patron saint of composting?

> Newman's beatification was still dragging on fitfully when Pope Benedict fast-tracked him two years ago. On a wet October day in 2008, an assortment of priests and grave-diggers arrived at the cemetery in Rednal, armed with shovels and a mechanical digger. They planned to transfer Newman's remains to a tomb back at his church in Birmingham. Nothing was found except the brass name-plate and a few bits of rotten wood. A solution to the mystery was discovered in the archives of the Birmingham Post. A journalist at the burial reported that, on Newman’s orders, the grave was filled with compost to hasten decomposition. His corpse (someone described him in great age as toothless and shrivelled like "a shrimp") had apparently dissolved into the soil. He had cheated the relic hunters.

https://www.ft.com/content/0e6f301c-baea-11df-9e1d-00144feab...

for anyone else who was curious :)

Why can't people just opt to be buried without embalming or a casket? Sounds like a nice way to go buried whole and maybe with some sort of tree seed that grows over where you are laid.

Not going to lie on a personal level, the composting process sounds terrible.

Cardboard caskets are half-way there.

I think there is the option (at least in the UK [1]) to be buried in a coffin which is quickly biodegradable, thereby speeding up the recycling process.

[1] - https://naturalendings.co.uk/green-coffins/

There's this Dutch startup growing coffins with fungus.

https://futurism.com/living-cocoon-coffin-fungus

"Green Burials" [1] are gaining in popularity.

Sadly I know this because a young person that committed suicide opted for such a burial. I imagine the older generations are more concerned with tradition and religion.

[1] https://www.nhfuneral.org/green-burial-cemeteries-in-the-us-...

Personally I'd opt for a Mongolian style sky burial. They just take you out onto a mountainside, cut you up a little bit, and the carrion birds and other animals come to eat you up. Seems like the quickest way to return your elements to the earth.

This reminds me of the Towers of Silence found in historical Persia, and modern-day India: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Silence

Zoroastrian rituals related to death are fascinating (not only because of their impact on abrahamic religions, but that's a different story)

Very cool. I didn't know about this kind of death ritual outside of the Mongolian steppes. Thanks for the link.

how about "whale fall" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale_fall) burial, feeding the oceans

Sleep With The Fishes As A Service

I just need a cremation and a modestly priced receptical.

Or a ensure a Ralphs is nearby.

That's usually how Muslims do it. Though we usually use very simple wooden caskets to ease transportation and handling . We usually also bury the corpse 24h or less after death, since we traditionally couldn't preserve it ( though refrigeration made that possible without embalming)

Interesting how jews have this too. I wonder where this practice came from.

That's interesting, I didn't know we had that in common. Islam takes a lot from Judaism so I guess it shouldn't be surprising. If I had to guess about why it needs to be so fast though, it is probably not a good idea to not bury someone very very quickly in the middle east. As for the very simple caskets, in Islam it is because we are supposed to be all equal in death so going with expensive tombstones or caskets would be very frowned upon. That's why a Muslim cemetery is usually very "minimalistic" and the tombstones very simple.

I'd add (because it's not obvious from what you said) that the gasket does not go into the tomb. The corpse goes enveloped in white gaze. And before the transportation the corpse is cleaned with water and perfumed with safran.

What about getting set up on pyre in Varanasi? To be fair, not really a green option (CO2 emissions) but feels a bit more natural than being buried

CO2 is least of the problems with varansi. From disease vectors to river pollution there is ton of issues with it.

Enbalming isn't universal; AFAIK it's forbidden, or at least discouraged, in Judaism and Islam, say. Coffins also aren't universal (but can be made biodegradable, anyway)

Interestingly, though modern Jewish practice is to prohibit embalming, Joseph had Jacob embalmed in Genesis 50:2

Human remains can be somewhat toxic (particularly to humans).

Human remains are a breeding ground for disease that specializes in breaking down humans. Now imagine that diseased juice getting into the local water system.

It's a myth that human remains are toxic. A human body is only as toxic as the living human that it once was. Which is to say, avoid getting blood and feces on your mucous membranes and you're not at any elevated risk.

With regard to drinking water, here's what the CDC advises with regard to whether people should be concerned with a natural abundance of un-preserved corpses in the wake of a natural disaster:

"Bacteria and viruses from human remains in flood water are a minor part of the overall contamination that can include uncontrolled sewerage, a variety of soil and water organisms, and household and industrial chemicals. There are no additional practices or precautions for flood water related to human remains, beyond what is normally required for safe food and drinking water, standard hygiene and first aid."

https://www.cdc.gov/disasters/handleremains.html

In general their broader advice is that you don't need to worry about any sort of disease outbreak happening if there are un-preserved corpses lying around (a position with which the WHO concurs).

We should be more concerned with formaldehyde leaching out of preserved corpses than from any chemical byproduct of human decomposition.

"Human remains are a breeding ground for disease that specializes in breaking down humans"

They are not diseases, but common microorganism - and they are specialized into breaking down any dead organic material.

You don't want them in the drinking water, though. But you don't want any microorganism in the drinking water.

> Why can't people just opt to be buried without embalming or a casket?

The article mentions the amount of land that this uses. I’d imagine that’s a big part of it.

> Why can't people just opt to be buried

Because this is a huge waste of land.

You can, at least here in Washington state. It's called 'green burial'.

In my country they can. They have a special "cemetery" that is designated as a nature preserve. No tombstones or signs and no coffins.

https://begravenindenatuur.com/overzicht-natuurbegraafplaats...

I actually find anti-decay measures applied to corpses disgusting. I feel like corpses should be buried raw right into soil or in plain wood coffins at max, not marinated in formaldehyde and put in non-compostable coffins.

I have a hard time with this too. For a long time my preferred burial would be wrapping me in a blanket and burying me somewhere in the woods. I know it's not practical, but certainly a nicer thought than pumping me full of preservatives and locking me into a $10K sarcophagus.

Let the earth eat me when I die.

What you are describing is Muslim ritual

Beware of articles like these. They are PR pieces profiling the services of a company. And making it seem like everyone is doing it. and how it is all the rage.

PG has an essay on that, submarine articles: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

Environmentally naive: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/cemetery-soil-human-re... Promession, which is legal in the United Kingdom, Sweden, and South Korea, but not yet a reality is a better solution: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HD5Gt80H6s

Hallucinogenic mushrooms are legal to grow in Oregon so I'd like have some grown on my composted body and parcel them out for a ceremony of my life

That's a lot of pressure on whoever's propogating them. Better to spread the compost somewhere they already grow (like Oregon) and collect seasonally.

I'm sure Shamans will become a thing now that they are legal and offer a ceremony like this.

> Better to spread the compost somewhere they already grow (like Oregon) and collect seasonally.

Different species of psychedelic mushrooms have been found in almost all of the contiguous United States and Hawai'i. It used to be thought that the PNW and Southeast US were the only places they grew in the US, but new native species have been discovered in the last 20 years, and some of them are actually quite common, prolific and apparently potent.

What happens to embedded e-waste/trash in humans (pace makers, artificial hips, implants, etc.)?

Seems it would be easy to remove non-compostable materials first.

I wonder if they could be recycled? Not joking. Those hip replacement parts are incredibly expensive; I'm sure there are folks who are in need and could use a cheaper option.

They are recycled in some places. Such as sub-saharan Africa

In Sweden they used to reuse pacemakers a couple decades back. Don't know about now. I think also American pacemakers are exported to India.

Repo Men (2010)

Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008)

Googling would answer your questions.

Pacemakers are removed carefully, especially if they include RTGs.

http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2015/ph241/degraw2/

Prosthetic implants are typically not removed.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20140311-body-parts-that-...

In the US, if possible, my heart valve will be cut out of my cadaver and sent back to the manufacturer for analysis. The devices from my body, that have been replaced over time, were tested until failure. The FDA is very interested in performance metrics of implanted devices. The materials are not recycled in the US afaik.

probably pales in comparison to other waste

I was told by an elderly foreign gentleman that he made his living by removing such things from bodies before burial or cremation. He said that the metals in teeth were most of his business.

The metals in vascular stents and coils is valuable too (but imagine trying to retrieve those).

I know someone who saved up the ones dropped or otherwise opened and not used on a cath lab. I’m not sure what he did after that.

This makes so much sense, I prefer that my body can be used to grow plants/trees and whatever vegetals rather than getting putrefied in a coffin, and using land space for no reason

Fully support this for myself, though I don't think I need my composed remains to be returned to the family. Not sure why, but that feels more grim than ashes on the mantle (though I don't feel a need for that either).

One example on the benefit of being returned to the family is that they can take you and plant a tree in you and then you grow into a tree, likely near the family, so that you can still be with them in a physical way!

If they decree to tree me, I’ll be their tree with glee.

> Before human composting gained traction, green burials—in which the body is prepared without chemicals and planted underground in an organic, biodegradable container, often underneath a tree sapling—emerged in 1998 as an alternative to traditional high-impact burial methods, according to the Green Burial Council.

Are we talking 1998 A.D. or B.C.?

Alkaline hydrolysis (water cremation) is another green way of disposing human and animal remains. It's a low cost option too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkaline_hydrolysis_(body_disp...

If a plant such as a tree is grown from your remains don’t you basically “become” the tree?

I’ve always thought it would be great if one could become some kind of long lasting tree that could last generations and could be visited upon by ancestors, but I don’t know how practical such graveyard forests would be.

Just like the "fathertrees" from Card's book "Speaker for the Dead."

That's neat I've felt the same instinct.

> Cremation–in which a body is burned into ash—is an energy suck and emits damaging pollutants and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming.

> a corpse is placed in a cylinder with organic materials, like wood chips, plants, and straw, then heated and turned repeatedly for several weeks with a hook until it’s broken down into a nutrient-rich soil

I wonder how much energy it takes to complete the composting process and how they can ensure that the electricity needed (even if less than cremation) is generated by sustainable methods.

I would think bone doesn't break down much during this process. So what are we left to do with the mixed-up skeleton?

Make jelly?

Given prions, I would imagine this would be a step backward for public health.

That assumes prions.

That assumes public health.

You know what they say: assume prions, or get kuru.

Aerobic bacteria in composters can eat bone, egg shells, and meat pretty well. If you are going to do it in a garden though you will want something to contain the smell and prevent breeding of pests.

https://www.cleanairgardening.com/how-to-compost-meat/

I'm sure someone can calculate it, but it wouldn't be much. It'd be an electric motor running slow with relatively light weight (<300lbs). Likely less than 10kWh for the entire process.

As for sustainability, Wouldn't be hard to power the whole thing with a solar farm and batteries. That said, oregon is part of a set of states which draw a very large portion of their power from hydro.

Turning a compost pile takes very little energy. So little in fact that a human can do it with one hand in a minute. Leave the container in the sun for heat, and turn it on an axle. In addition it's only once a day at most.

Heat in the winter would be less than the amount used for those electric blankets. In the summer you could almost power the composter with a car battery.

Cremation takes a about 40 kilowatt hours of electricity or fuel. The process usually requires very expensive furnaces that can get hot enough. In addition it requires special permits and there are a lot of regulations and zoning limitations.

However, 40 kwh isn't that much compared to steel and concrete production. Especially since the per capita is literally 40kwh. Most people use more than that to brush their teeth. The real advantage (of composting) is that it makes a cheaper alternative for families of deceased.

There are anerobic composting methods that are even more passive then what is described in the article.

For example, in Bokashi composting you innoculate your organic matter with a blend of anerobic microbes (primarily Lacto Bacillus) store in anerobic conditions for a few weeks. When you empty the bucket it doesn't look especially decomposed but it smells sweet and pickled. You can then bury it in your yard and it rapidly decomposes into soil.

This method can safely decompose meat, dairy, and all sorts of materials you wouldn't ordinarily consider safe for at home aerobic composting. I imagine it would be an ideal system for a compost burial process so long as the family is okay with the idea of fermenting their loved ones..

How does anyone? Buy from a green provider or plan.

A friend this to me before seeing it on HN.. and this was my sarcastic but mostly serious response:

The royal colony of Oregon among the imperial nation of the United States allows for human beings to return to the Earth when they die.

In all seriousness... I'm going to dig a whole in the ground and my friends and family can literally drag me in there.

This ridiculousness goes the way back to the "embalming industry" circa civil war.

edit: typo

I hope to donate my body to science. Depending on the manner of death and location, it should be a matter of specifying it in your will.

It gives new meaning to:

Grandma makes the best potatoes

I was hoping this was about humanure:

https://sustainablefoodtrust.org/articles/human-manure-closi...

This is really huge!!! I'll definitely choose this route when my time comes!

Open burials for pets and such are also legal here in Oregon as long as it is 100 or so feet away from a water source, like a stream, pond, lake etc.

Need a highway ad:

"Please volunteer for human composting. Recycle yourself!"

These comments are so depressing. I really hope that we'll figure out a way to reverse aging in the coming decades so death becomes optional.

I’m totally with you on that one! I’m getting old though, I don’t expect those technologies to arrive soon enough for me to take advantage of them. Some sort of green burial is my likely future.

As a last resort, you could have your body frozen to at least give yourself a non-zero chance of being resurrected at some point in the future. Not dying in the first place is of course a much better option, but if you have to, cryonics is your best bet.

Can you imagine living for ever? We'd have even more of a population problem, unless you can find a way to stop having kids, and even then I feel like it would make for a stagnant society.

I don't think the public health risks are justified -> I'd rather go with cremation, done once, no remains, graves or other BS.

Composting releases CO2 into the atmosphere. Despite the treehugging vibe, it actually makes global warming worse.

I believe that's only true for anaerobic composting, the stinky one, using mostly greens (nitrogen). Aerobic composting, which most people do in their back yard, mixing greens and browns (carbon) is fine.

I just want to be cremated and my ashes scattered on moon. IMO it could be a huge business opportunity.

lol what the fuck? if you have all that money do something useful, or at least indulge yourself while you are alive

Paying to have yourself scattered on the moon is indulging yourself while you're alive.

there are folks who pay to convert their ashes into diamonds, maybe I'll do both 'cause y'er not the boss of me.

but seriously if someone has money for something like this how do you judge that they did not live their life fully? at least its better than taking up permanent real estate in a cemetery.

I wonder what kind of heavy metals and other toxins accumulate within the human lifetime?

I'd be just as happy to know i was being disposed of via a magma flow or something. I really don't care whats done with my body after i'm done with it... just as long as its disposal isn't going to do further damage to the world or its inhabitants...

Make sure they take your car keys out of your pocket before dumping you... ...because, man, they're gone.

I was really excited thinking this was going to be about humanure.

Aren't humans full of mercury and other nasty substances?

According to Dr. Elaine Ingham, "the compost tea lady", a large compost pile designed to be anaerobic can consume cow carcasses. It does take several months.

>designed to be anaerobic

aerobic - with oxygen

Anaerobic decomposes as well but it is not compost. Anaerobic decomposition is putrefaction and creates the "smell of death"

No, actually, they meant anaerobic. There's a trend nowadays where organic matter is steeped in water in a sealed container and allowed to decay without oxygen and the water is used to water plants, hence "compost tea." Maybe "compost" isn't strictly a good word for it but that's what they call it.

I have listened to many hours of Dr. Ingham. I am certain that she said aerobic. Her whole business is aerated compost and aerated compost tea.

Yes, there is a trend for anerobic teas. But it didnt come from Elaine Ingham.

Her workshop covered both aerobic and anaerobic compost. Anaerobic composting has uses, and one is getting rid of animal carcasses.

?? Why not just do sky burial.

Pass.

Oy! Get back here you!

People didn't watch Cloud Atlas. D:

You beat me to it

"It is every citizen's final duty to go into the tanks and become one with all the people." - Chairman Sheng-ji Yang

Remind me to never buy soil from Oregon.

You know all soil is made from/has dead things in it right?

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