Posted on 05/08/2015 2:27:31 PM PDT by Rebelbase
It is a startling next step in the natural burial movement. Even as more people opt for interment in simple shrouds or biodegradable caskets, urban cemeteries continue to fill up. For the environmentally conscious, cremation is a problematic option, as the process releases greenhouse gases.
Armed with a prestigious environmental fellowship, Katrina Spade, a 37-year-old Seattle resident with a degree in architecture, has proposed an alternative: a facility for human composting.
The idea is attracting interest from environmental advocates and scientists. The woman laid to rest in wood chips is a first step in testing how it would work.
“Composting makes people think of banana peels and coffee grounds,” Ms. Spade said. But “our bodies have nutrients. What if we could grow new life after we’ve died?”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I favor planting an apple tree over me. I like to imagine future generations enjoying my legacy . . .
How about Mooselimb crpses? Shiite makes good fertilizer.
“A project to turn corpses into compost”
I always thought that project was already called pushing daisies.
Decomposting
Very true. My father wanted his ashes scattered in a place that is too distant to visit. I regret not having a place I can visit, and I know my Mother does as well. It’s something I did not foresee.
No, faith, not a jot; but to follow him thither with modesty enough, and likelihood to lead it: as thus: Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth into dust; the dust is earth; of earth we make loam; and why of that loam, whereto he was converted, might they not stop a beer-barrel?
Imperious Caesar, dead and turn’d to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away:
O, that that earth, which kept the world in awe,
Should patch a wall to expel the winter flaw!
It's also a very recent tradition. It used to be that the body was buried without a box, or in a plain wood box (which would decompose along with the body once in the ground)
I’d like to be sunk in a cloth bag at sea over the Marianas trench.
Exactly. And before more modern means of burial, many cemeteries were foul, gruesome places.
Have specified that I be cremated and my ashes be spread in a pine forest.
It costs $10,000/lb to get to orbit. That would be an expensive "burial".
I think a lot of non-traditional burials are a response to the obscene cost of burial as much as a desire to be "green".
I haven’t heard of bodies surfacing except in flood zones.
I’ve heard of the wood casket collapsing and a depression forming in the soil, but you can just top it off with more soil and plant grass.
My family cemetery is not in a flood zone, but the state requires a concrete vault. All I want I a pine box and no vault.
I don’t think funeral homes offer the plain pine box. Nope, it’s particle board - tacky, icky, awful. So people upgrade. Most people, anyway, my mother stuck to her guns and bought the particle board coffin for her mother.
Katarina Spade’s financial backer, Antonio “Tony Greeneco” Tesataverde said, “Yeah, Compostin’. Dat’s what we call it. Yous gotta prolem wid dat?”
Would it be just as good for my rhubarb?
Make your own or have someone make it for you. I had seen some beautiful home made pine boxes. If buried within 24 hours you do not have to be embalmed. A vault is required at my families cemetery. I plan doing it the old way with coffin and vault. Buried on my back with my head facing west along with all my other ancestors. So as it says when he comes from the east and the dead shall arise etc. I am just too traditional. I am from the South where Decoration Day is still a thing to attend. Plus the cemetery bears my family name as it was started back in the day.
The bard?
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