We should all get the hell out of the way, with our bodies decently planted in the earth to nourish other forms of life — weeds, flowers, shrubs, trees, which support other forms of life, which support the ongoing human pageant — the lives of our children. That seems good enough to me.
— Edward Abbey
For most of human history, deceased human beings were left exposed, to feed carrion eaters and the soil critters underneath. About 100,000 years ago, first shallow graves appeared — the body enriched the topsoil while being protected from the beasties by a layer of soil and rock. And so it continued, until the Neolithic.
That’s when funerary customs took a bizarre turn. In the settlements transitioning from foraging to agriculture people began to bury the dead under the floor of their houses. Sometimes, they disinterred the cadaver and cut off its skull, to be plastered and painted for display. (Didn’t they mind the stench and gruesomeness?!)
As elites rose into power, all around the world they began to build elaborate tombs to house their mortal remains. In some places, the brisk business of embalming sold sure tickets to the next world. But whether the bodies were embalmed or not, the soil was denied its due as corpses rotted or mummified in stone chambers. Was this the first time the nutrient cycle was broken? As the lower orders aped their “betters,” the idea caught on. Flip the bird to Mother Nature: you can’t have my body back, you old hag! I am too fancy for the likes of you!
Fast forward to the present. In some parts of the world, scant remaining forests are denuded to burn corpses on a pyre so their ashes can be thrown into the river people drink from. Um. Sky burials sound reasonable until you find out that priests are engaged to dismember and deflesh the naked corpses high on the mountain. Did the vultures demand smaller pieces, or is it another example of priestly entrepreneurial zeal? Alas, western civ hasn’t done any better. Let us review the options on offer to the distraught relatives of our neighbors who have just shuffled off their mortal coil.
1. Burn the body, place the ashes in a metal or marble urn, and stash them away in a mausoleum where they will sit till the sun burns out. (Although, for a small fee a company will spread them out at sea, or the families can find a remote natural spot.) This method was cunningly designed to burn vast amounts of natural gas or propane, in addition to ensuring that we all end up breathing corpse particles along with mercury fillings, dioxin, hydrochloric acid, sulfur and carbon dioxide. Please note that in some crowded places on the planet (Japan, parts of China and western Europe), this is now the only option available. It gives new meaning to the image of Beijing shrouded in smog.
Data from the funeral industry are hard to come by; my back-of-the-envelope calculations tell me that my small house in Colorado could be heated by the propane used in one cremation for about a month.
2. Bury the body 6 feet under, in a large wooden coffin with brass handles encased in a concrete or metal vault, making sure the body decays as slowly as possible within a layer of soil with very few microorganisms, thus causing maximum groundwater pollution. Forests die so that fancy oaken or tropical wood coffins can be ostentatiously displayed. Embalming — a horrid process I mostly skipped over when reading informative Grave Matters, a book promoting greener funerals — makes sure that the groundwater is not only polluted with cadaver goo, but also with some 200 different types of toxic ick. The undertakers as a profession suffer from diseases caused by frequent exposure.
According to National Geographic, American funerals are responsible each year for the felling of 30 million board feet of casket wood (some of which comes from tropical hardwoods), 90,000 tons of steel, 1.6 million tons of concrete for burial vaults, and 800,000 gallons of embalming fluid. Even cremation is an environmental horror story, with the incineration process emitting many a noxious substance.
Way to go, folks! Way to go? No, thank you. Myself, I’d rather go quietly back to the earth that brought me forth, and skip the parts where my ol’ body burns up enough gas to heat a house in the winter, kills forests or pollutes air and watersheds. Neither am I one of those who would rather pretend they can evade the deep truth: “dust you are, and to dust you shall return.”
What, then, are my options?
Walking off to a remote place and letting the good beasties have me sounded swell until I realized that when I am dying, I probably won’t have the vim and vigor required for a long hike.
Promession is a Swedish process whereby the body is placed in a tub of liquid nitrogen, freeze-dried, then jostled and turned into powder which can then be buried in topsoil and will compost within the year. Alas, the inventor has promised more than she can deliver, and the whole thing sounds like vaporware.
Resomation (aka bio-cremation) puts the body in a steel tank containing water and lye, applies modest heat (about 350°F compared to 2000°F needed for incineration), and pressure. After several hours, the bone fragments are given to the family and the rest of the brew is unceremoniously flushed down the drain. Ah. New Hampshire and the Catholic Church have developed doubts about that bit. But several states and Saskatchewan do make resomation currently available, and indeed, it seems much greener than the popular choices, as long as your sewer pipes and waste water plant can handle it. Some universities use it to dispose of bodies in their donor programs. On the other hand, it externalizes the disposition of the cadaverous chemicals onto the public infrastructure, and ultimately the waterways.
Natural burial in green cemeteries appeals a great deal because it supports nature reserves that might otherwise fall to the developers’ axe. There are more than 200 such woodland or meadow cemeteries in the UK, and about 20 in the States, with more on the way. Green cemeteries ban embalming, fancy coffins and vaults, and implement shallow graves. And they are loveliness itself, a joy for grieving families and hikers, both.
Pyrolysium might some day dispose of bodies via pyrolysis, and turn our dearly departed into sacks of biochar that can be conveniently used as soil amendment.
Composting large road-kill like deer has been successfully implemented in several places around the country by laying the corpse on a bed of woodchips, then piling a whole lot of chips on top. The decomposition is completed within several months, and the bones ground up for bone meal fertilizer. Why not do that with humans? I would be happy to volunteer. It sounds like the cleanest, sanest, simplest, and cheapest alternative of all.
Unless, of course, you can bury your loved one on your own plot of land. It is not that difficult in most states, and the book Final Rights will help you navigate the legalities.
And don’t forget biodegradable, tree-sparing coffins and shrouds, ranging from cardboard boxes (lame), through soft winding sheets, all the way to beautiful willow basketry, felt cocoons, and papier-mache pods. About time.
Let’s all play “beat the reaper” and turn our used-up bodies into new life!
March 22, 2013 at 2:29 pm
Twelve years ago my neighbor died suddenly. Because I had taken a class on death and dying, I knew that burial without cremation on one’s own land is legal in WV. The neighbors all stayed home from work or school and helped dig a grave on the widow’s property, and cook food. The body was hung up at the local funeral home till sunset, because the coroner was the funeral dude, and the sheriff had to sign off to let us take care of the burial, and he was in court all day. He signed off readily but some asshole state cop demanded that we wait till he “investigated”. Once he got out of the way and we drove the body home; when we came around the last bend we find fifty people waiting with candles–there was something about that moment I’ll never forget. And we lowered the coffin into the grave singing Amazing Grace and Will the Circle Be Unbroken, and reading a Buddhist prayer. The widow had to deal with lots of grief, but she and all of us took comfort in this sensible, traditional approach, so much more meaningful than the stale ceremony in a Catholic church and the “viewing” in a funeral home I’d seen with my father-in-law a couple of months earlier. After that i found out that West Virginia actually has no laws about how one deals with this–we could have skipped the box altogether, as I hope will be done when my time comes. You sure named a lot of shuddersome options–but the cremation one, I think, does make sense in densely crowded cities.
March 22, 2013 at 2:54 pm
Good for you! Wonderful way to go. I know of someone buried in a garden at Earthaven, with a fruit tree planted over him.
As for crowded cities, I think resomation would make the most sense IF they can figure out how to reclaim the lye for reuse (or neutralize it), and use the separated liquid to sprinkle in one of those cemetery areas set aside for dispersal of ashes. Instant fertilizer, and respectful disposal both. What do you think?
March 22, 2013 at 4:44 pm
I just found out another nasty on cremation. It does not destroy prions (from Mad Cow Disease, bird flu, anthrax et al) and they end up raining on our heads. Eew. On the other hand, resomation does destroy them. Hm. Another point in its favor.
March 22, 2013 at 8:40 pm
Oy. Resomation sounds as horrifying as most of the other choices. Really, to me the simple and obvious choice–wrap the body in a cloth, and bury it 2 or 3 feet deep with a tree on top, and just let the natural agents of decomposition render the body gradually into other life–seems so much preferable. Even in the crowded city context, it might be more doable if we got over wanting the remains to be untouched and marked forever. I think in some countries they have graveyards where the family pays a fee for temporary grave use–after a couple decades, the contents are I suppose moved to a more condensed space and the grave space gets a new tenant.
March 22, 2013 at 9:11 pm
Hillarious!
March 23, 2013 at 10:29 am
Thanks for writing this–it’s a much needed addition to our ecological thinking. As you know, I recently wrote about three levels of composting: 1) the leaves and food scraps thing most people associate with composting, 2) body wastes (ala humanure and liquid gold), and 3) composting ourselves. I think this third level is the most profound and completes the cycle.
As for me, I’m definitely opting for a Natural Burial. I’d love to have a fruit tree planted above me and help provide nutrients for it.
[Ed. see MoonRaven’s post here]
March 23, 2013 at 10:50 am
I’m for scavenging. Let my nutrients nourish some other creature in the most direct manner possible, using the least possible resource. Lay me out in the Glade of Passage, and let the critters have at me.
March 23, 2013 at 11:43 am
That would be my choice, if there were a Glade of Passage accessible to me, and people willing to put me there. 🙂 Vultures need help, they are not thriving the way they used to… and that goes for all the carnivores too.
March 23, 2013 at 12:05 pm
Vultures… that reminds me of comments a farmers’ group I’m involved with made in response to proposed new Provincial regulations for agricultural waste:
“The proposed requirement that all [farm animal] burials be 4 metres above seasonal high water table suggests either that the Ministry is proposing platform burials (which are ecologically sound and would support turkey vulture populations) or that it is regulating for a different planet.”
Yea, governments do stupid things. I wonder which industry lobbyist got the 4 metre requirement in there… probably a company that processes farm animal deaths…
March 23, 2013 at 12:11 pm
Hey, just let them pass it and do platforms! 🙂
March 23, 2013 at 12:52 pm
Mary: Well, yes, but in a city… a cemetery is a huge plot that leaks the dead into the groundwater. Back in the old country, they lay the dead on top of each other after some decades pass… but that does not address the problems: the grave needs to be shallow, it needs to not leak into the groundwater, and the whole scheme needs to skip the chemical embalming nonsense and all the toxins and damage that comes from conventional coffins and vaults (which are typically demanded by the cemeteries).
On top of that, some places are running out of room even if they stack the bodies. Rent a grave? Not a bad idea… what do you do with the bones?
March 23, 2013 at 3:36 pm
absolutely, that whole embalming and metal coffin business has to stop. But it’s so profitable. In that class I mentioned, we took a field trip to a funeral home to learn a little about the business. We were shown the coffins, and then sat while the owner talked about his work. At one point he was describing a watertight coffin, imagining he was selling it to someone for their dead mother, and saying “That’s your mother, you don’t want her to get wet!” At that point I couldn’t hold out any more–I raised my hand and pointed out “She’s DEAD!” It was like I’d farted loudly in church…
March 23, 2013 at 4:20 pm
Gadz, that’s exactly the scene described in the book I mentioned, Grave Matters. They sell a lot of crap by assuring people the dead will be protected from the elements. People are such suckers. They pay through the nose for “an airtight coffin” only to find out later some horrible ooze is coming from it (if deposited in a crypt). Without the air, the body can’t decompose naturally and turns into hideous ooze. The industry gets sued over and over for this, but nothing ever happens. Another scam is… the presell. People buy plots, then when they want to use them 50 years later, the papers, owners, cemeteries have disappeared. Or the mausoleum remains unbuilt. Arggh. Takerism at its sickest.
Oh and what they don’t tell you that you can rent a coffin if you are doing cremation. A lot cheaper and saner than burning your fancy coffin in the oven.
March 23, 2013 at 5:23 pm
“Another scam is… the presell.”
My Dad has always been obsessed with death and getting old. He bought plots for the whole fam damily! He even bought headstones! He was mightily pissed when they engraved his birthdate and “19” as the first two digits of date of death.
March 24, 2013 at 6:20 pm
Sorry the sound quality, and even the rendition of this isn’t that great. Saw him sing this solo on accordion this morning, it was beautiful, I shed a couple tears…
peace
March 24, 2013 at 6:21 pm
oops, well…if you’re interested skip to the 27 minute mark for the “I’ll rot away”…
peace
March 24, 2013 at 8:23 pm
You just made my day, Osker! 😀
March 25, 2013 at 9:32 am
1491
Before it became the New World, the Western Hemisphere was vastly more populous and sophisticated than has been thought—an altogether more salubrious place to live at the time than, say, Europe. New evidence of both the extent of the population and its agricultural advancement leads to a remarkable conjecture: the Amazon rain forest may be largely a human artifact
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/03/1491/302445/
an interesting article about the possible population density prior to the “discovery” of the Americas.
and yes, a burlap bag will do just fine for me thank you. i find it creepy to think of peoples fingernails growing for years while they are mummified inside an iron casket, very howard hughes.
March 25, 2013 at 9:40 am
Heh. Yes, I would rather skip that part too, Derek.
I just heard this morning from one of the companies that promote resomation. I had inquired about the disposal of the body once it has been liquified. He said:
“To address your question about releasing bodily fluids to water treatment, what we are recommending is the exact same destination that has occurred for centuries in every prep room at a funeral home. When a body is prepared for visitation, viewing, etc…and embalming procedures are administered, where do you think the blood is released? Same water treatment. The only difference between what we are recommending versus traditional prep rooms is at least with Bio cremation, we’re creating a sterile effluent before we release to water treatment.”
Boy, traditional funerals are sounding worse by the hour. And I have not even talked about the exploding caskets! 😯
March 25, 2013 at 10:20 am
this modern mummification, it’s so Egyptian, perhaps related to the concept of the one true god carried out of there by the ancient Hebrews?
you know, if we have a soul, then it leaves when we die; at this point the body is best left to rot in the ground providing nutrienets for the future.
our ways of dealing with our dead are very heavily influenced by religion.
March 25, 2013 at 11:48 am
I think the way we deal with the dead in the U.S. is very heavily influenced by manipulative salesmen who are not ashamed to yank people in the middle of grief. When we were burying my mother, we (being European) were horrified by embalming, and fancy coffins. We looked all over Miami to find someone who would bury her in a plain pine coffin. They all told us they don’t do it, and don’t want our business. Then, a neighbor with connections offered to intercede, and indeed, one funeral house finally offered to bury her in a plain coffin, as long as the wood was covered by a cloth. We agreed. It should not have been this hard.
In retrospect, we should have turned to a Jewish funeral house — they are opposed to embalming and fancy coffins, and keep plain pine caskets on hand.
March 25, 2013 at 11:59 am
Our irrational fear of death, now that it’s no longer a part of daily life but scuttled away to some dark underground room where preparations are made out of sight and mind, has evolved into crazily elaborate burials and costs, which you rightly point out have broken the nutrient cycle. Although everyone’s comments above appear to agree that less is more (“planted” under a fruit tree or composted or fed to scavengers), the sheer ookiness of what becomes of the body after death is just too much for most to accept. People want (or are taught to want) clean and cosmetic — none of the messiness of flesh-eating and decomposition — even though the messiness is unavoidable. It just occurs now inside a poorly sealed box of some sort or in the flames of the pyre/crematorium. And this is to say nothing of the piles of money to be made off of funerals, burials, cremations, embalming, etc.
I wonder, if the anticipated die off commences soon, whether we won’t resort to carts and containers rolling down the streets with a barker (over a loudspeaker, no down) calling out “Bring out yer dead!” like in the Middle Ages. No doubt even without a virulent plague threatening infection, the (un-)civilized response to disposal will be just as silly and wasteful as what we now have.
March 25, 2013 at 12:27 pm
The irony, of course, Brutus, is that the natural decomposition that goes on when the body is laid in a shallow grave without impediments to the critters that do the decomposing, is in reality far less messy and far more wholesome than the one produced by the anaerobic process within a sealed coffin. There, you get disgusting sloshy ooze with methane often popping the lid open (if in a crypt). Gah.
March 26, 2013 at 11:23 am
The Guardian had a good article on the energy costs of cremation here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2005/oct/18/ethicalmoney.climatechange
Per the article it takes about 300 kwh of energy to cremate a body (285 gas, 15 electricity), about the same energy a person in Britain uses in a month for electric lights, refrigerator, etc. [Our usage here on the farm is roughly the same, but we are lower than most Americans.] If you want a gasoline equivalent, there are 860.4 kilocalories in a kilowatt hour and there are 31,500 kcal in a gallon of gas. This calculates out to 8.2 gallons of gas, about 205 miles for a typical American. So if you take one less trip of 100 miles and back in your car, you shouldn’t worry about the energy cost of getting cremated.
This does not address the prion issue, the mercury fillings in your teeth, etc., but in the overall scheme of things, driving a car swamps ALL energy costs of disposing of a body. In fact, it probably would be better to be cremated and the ashes dropped off at a hazardous treatment site.
March 26, 2013 at 12:00 pm
Thanks, Walter. The article seems to underestimate the usage (at 75 min). In Japan, it takes an hour to burn a body, because there the customs is for the relatives to poke through the ashes for the bone fragments.
In the U.S., it takes 2-3 hours to cremate a person.
The ashes are not toxic, the smoke is.
I was not comparing to driving a car. I was comparing to other forms of disposal of the dead, not only in terms of the energy and other materials wasted and turned into toxins, but also in terms of what is the best for the soil. Return, return, return…
And as for the numbers, multiplied by all the dead, they add up too. Nah? (Not everybody drives, but everybody dies.)
March 26, 2013 at 12:47 pm
Energy is energy. You cannot suspend the laws of thermodynamics. The true cost of energy is how much is consumed, not how much work is done. There are a lot of statistics bandied about in your post and in the copious replies. However, I trust the Guardian more than other sources since they have proven themselves in the past. They are also subject to peer review on a daily basis. Scientific journals have a high degree of integrity, NOT because of the researchers’ social status, but because they are subject to constant criticism. That is why peer review is so important. The Guardian has a lot of people willing to criticize them at the drop of a hat, so I am willing to use their numbers.
The car example: I find myself saying over and over to people these days, “It is just an example.” When I reframe the numbers into a context that is available to most adults because they drive a car, it does NOT mean that I am going off on a tangent. It simply means I am making a comparison.
The ashes are toxic because of the chemicals in the body that survive the burning process (mercury for instance). The smoke is probably toxic too. As you pointed out earlier, prions can survive the cremation process. There are no good alternatives, as even a simple burial in a winding sheet pollutes the land. The comparison in energy usage between driving and cremation is valid and apt. When a person dies there are offsetting energy calculations. For example, that person will not be driving their car to work every day. That person will not be consuming 230,000 kcal/day (American – higher if Canadian) in fossil fuels and embedded energy. Spending a little more energy for cremation rather than land burial is very small in comparison to the energy footprint of that person while they are living – especially if they are Canadian or American or British or Swedish or . . . .
Let me pose one more example on energy use (and remember, it is just an example). I use twice as much gasoline to mow our lawn every year than I do to grow 10,000 pounds of food. My energy conservation efforts are better served by mowing my lawn fewer times than not using a tiller. In the same sense, energy use for a burial is insignificant compared to the amount of energy the deceased used on a weekly basis during his/her recent past.
March 26, 2013 at 1:01 pm
My mistake. In most cremation, the mercury does go up in the smoke rather than remain in the ashes.
March 26, 2013 at 1:05 pm
But that’s not a valid comparison! The issue is not, should I die or will disposing of my remains entail too high an energy cost. It’s when someone else HAS died–and regardless of our opinions, everyone eventually does–how do we deal with it? Which is the best option? I still think burial, outside cities, makes the most sense. Despite fillings, the nutrients in a body are better returned to the Earth. We should stop using mercury in fillings. Perhaps at some point, metals in a body–fillings or artificial hips or whatever–will be removed after death and before burial.
March 26, 2013 at 3:18 pm
Bio-cremation is attempting to deal with things like the mercury and the metal body parts. Personally, I like the high-temp cremation because it reduces me (and all my pollution) to ash, which can be dumped in a hazardous material site, spread around the garden, or sent back to Norway to be dumped into the Sognefjord (the Norwegians frown on this, BTW). The garden solution for ash disposal is probably best because it dissipates further and is counteracted somewhat by my soil stewardship over the years. (Many pluses – a few negatives.)
Energy consumption IS a factor in deciding how to dispose of the body. Putting someone in the ground requires the soil microbes and critters to break down the body. It takes energy to do this. The pollutants in the body have to go somewhere. Since I was a migrant worker for 8 years, I probably have pesticide residues in my tissues still. This will be spread out in the environment. I think it is better to burn it up.
Burning at high temperatures and disposing of a much smaller ash volume would also be the best way to dispose of our chemical and nuclear weapon stockpiles. Think of the average human as a chemical weapon that needs to be disposed of carefully. You wouldn’t be far off.
March 26, 2013 at 3:58 pm
Walter, do you really think that if you burn pesticides they “go away” somehow? Don’t they instead get breathed by all the living, and fall on us in the form of rain?
Let’s see:
1. Cremation, lots of fossil fuel burned. Toxins released into the air we breathe, and ultimately the rain we drink.
2. Resomation, modest fossil fuel burned. Mercury and appliances fished out. Toxins undergo lysis, and are further treated at the waste water plant (maybe). And you can still send the ashes to Norway.
3. Garden burial, fossil fuel burned, zero. Toxins dealt with by fungi and microorganisms. And heck, if you want some of your ash in a fjord, you can tell them to burn a bone in a rocket stove after you’ve decomposed, and still end up in Sognefjord! 🙂
March 26, 2013 at 4:26 pm
The whole idea of high temperature burning is to change the chemical composition and break the molecular bonds. So, yes, they do “go away” (i.e. break into essential elements). The other salient point of my post(s) is that the energy footprint of the person’s daily life is so high that the method of disposal is insignificant in the overall scheme of things. I have a lower energy footprint than the average American or Canadian, but I still have a higher footprint than the average Chinese or Indian. When I die, there will be room for another 6 Chinese or 20 Indians on the planet at the current state of equilibrium. The method of disposal of my carcass has very little significance in the overall energy budget.
This is why assisted suicide should be cheap and easy. Each American or Canadian that shuffles off this mortal coil creates more space for the rest of the world than those in other countries.
[I imagine I will get howls of derision for that last sentence, but reality is a tough business.]
March 26, 2013 at 5:21 pm
Weeeell… I am not in the business here to compete over what is most significant, or not, in the large scheme of things. I am interested in the very real conundrum of what to do with our ex-bodies (including my own ex-body). Since I care a great deal about closing the nutrient cycle, my choice is clear. Return to soil, in as simple a way as possible. That way, humus is the winner. 🙂
And I hope that the post helps clarify things for other people, whatever choice they will make.
There are only two rules for this blog. One of them is to stay on topic. I strongly encourage everyone not to bite on the assisted whatever. Cheers!
March 26, 2013 at 6:49 pm
Good point. And I should be able to choose cremation too without specious arguments against it.
March 26, 2013 at 7:02 pm
Fraid can’t accommodate you on that one. This blog is full of specious arguments, flights of fancy, meanderings, and generally going one step ahead two steps back that seems the fate of human beings groping for meaning. Don’t say you haven’t been warned. 😉
Although… I confess I am somewhat surprised how attached you are to the pyre.
March 26, 2013 at 7:07 pm
I have a Beowulf complex.
March 26, 2013 at 7:09 pm
LOLOL… does Wikipedia have a treatise on the Beowulf complex? I must go look immediately.
March 26, 2013 at 8:09 pm
wvhaugen sez: The other salient point of my post(s) is that the energy footprint of the person’s daily life is so high that the method of disposal is insignificant in the overall scheme of things.
You have thrown out so many false comparisons I don’t know how to respond, but I don’t want to get into a pissing match to prove you wrong or myself right. That’s just pointless. This bit about “well, we’re already doing so much damage, what’s another log on the fire, really?” reminded me of a headline I saw in The Onion, something to the effect, “‘What’s so bad about another plastic water bottle in the landfill,’ ask 30,000 Americans?” It’s very easy to wash away the effects our choices have when aggregated a few thousand or million times.
March 28, 2013 at 7:03 am
My two best citrus trees, by far, have a drake and a sheep under them. The benefits of growing over decomposing bodies are immediate, and it’s so easy; plant the carcass, plant the plant!
I’m totally with you on this. Imagine beautiful abundant orchards where you can visit your loved ones, grab some fruit and say thanks Dad/Mum/Sis etc, you’re cropping especially well this year… 🙂
March 28, 2013 at 10:51 am
Angie, you are always a step ahead of me. Woof, how cool! Yet another way to do those natural cemeteries… with two streams of income rather than one. 🙂
Buried in an apple orchard… with all those fragrant blossoms and hum of bees overhead. Where do I sign up?
March 28, 2013 at 6:09 pm
Hey, another idea! What about Landshare? City folk can fence off a bit of grazing land to nurture bucolic copses of fruit trees on the corpses of their loved-ones, with smaller shrubs, say blueberries on the dog and cat… and a strawberry on the budgie.
Landholders would surely be happy with that!
Let’s do it Vera! I’ll run the aussie franchise :0
March 31, 2013 at 6:29 am
A corps of cops may chorus re: copses on corpses.
April 4, 2013 at 12:13 pm
Congratulations! You’ve been syndicated on Resilience.org!
April 6, 2013 at 5:29 pm
Thank you for mentioning us http://pyrolysium.org Pyrolysis only exhausts gases form the body so the mercury of the dental fillings is easily separated from the gasses that are been released. We are trying to get funding for a full scale infra-red heated pyrolysis cell to proof the process in collaboration with a university in the Netherlands. April next year it’s the centennial of cremation in the Netherlands!
February 11, 2019 at 8:25 am
Looks like some folks in WA state have decided to pursue the chip composting model. I wish them luck.
https://www.recompose.life/