Urban Death Project Aims To Rebuild Our Soil By Composting Corpses (inhabitat.com) 197
An anonymous reader writes: The Urban Death Project utilizes the process of composting to safely and gently turn our deceased into soil-building material, creating a meaningful, equitable and ecological urban alternative to existing options for the disposition of the dead," said Katrina Spade, a designer based in Seattle. "The project is a solution to the overcrowding of city cemeteries, a sustainable method of disposing of our dead, and a new ritual for laying our loved ones to rest."
Kind of like sky burial (Score:5, Interesting)
Sky burial has been practiced in Tibet for millennia. [wikipedia.org]
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The only thing that would make this better for me would be if I could get my corpse shot out of a cannon onto the mountain amid fireworks.
Already did my part (Score:5, Funny)
Urban Death (Score:3)
I know just what to call it (Score:4, Funny)
SNL sketch . . . (Score:2)
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Blossoming Cherry Trees (Score:4, Interesting)
Dead bodies are buried under the cherry trees. -- Motojirou Kajii.
I imagine a field where they recycle our flesh filled with bright red cherry trees in full bloom.
Don't care (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Don't care (Score:5, Funny)
Just make sure I'm dead first.
**gunshot fires** - Ok, what was next?
Wood chipper (Score:4, Informative)
Just use a wood chipper to take care of the problem. I know it works cause I saw it on TV.
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Just use a wood chipper to take care of the problem. I know it works cause I saw it on TV.
Yeah, but didn't they catch and convict that guy? He did murder his wife before chipping her, after all.
I would like to volunteer some participants. (Score:4, Funny)
My eyes must be tired: (Score:5, Funny)
I read the headline as:
"Urban Death Project Aims To Rebuild Our Soil By Composting Congress"
And thought, "What an amazingly good idea!"
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Especially since they are mostly full of shit to start with. Don't forget Obama and his minions, they can fertilize the back forty.
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Toxic dumping (Score:3)
Environmentally unconscious (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, whatever you and your family want to do with your body is fine with me, but this is just idiotic from an environmental perspective. The environmental value of your body's chemical components is totally negligible compared to what you consume over your lifetime. I mean, I eat my weight's worth of food in a few months, so returning my body's nitrogen to the farmland is almost worthless. My share of fossil fuel burning is about 17 tonnes of carbon per year, so cremating the couple of kilograms of carbon I contain makes no difference.
The only real environmental problem with burial is that it ties up valuable urban land in a cemetery forever. Which is definitely an issue, but it's easy to solve: just get yourself cremated. This composting thing is expensive, unsafe, and a waste of time.
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This. Whatever my dead ass does to the planet is a rounding error compared to what I've done to it so far.
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Or every action has a consequence according to Universal Law. Everything is connected yes?
I'm also connected to asteroids in the Andromeda Galaxy. Maybe we should be firing off our corpses to there at nine tenths the speed of light because of that connection.
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Cremation takes a LOT of energy:
https://www.quora.com/How-much... [quora.com]
And it's not "clean":
http://faculty.virginia.edu/me... [virginia.edu]
I don't suppose there's any data yet about how much energy it takes to compost a corpse, but at least you're getting *something* of value at the end. I'd like to think that I'm giving something back after a lifetime of consumption.
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Your link says 3 liters of fuel oil? That's about 1 hour's worth of fossil fuel usage for the average living American. Cremation probably takes longer than that, so you actually burn less carbon while you're literally on fire than while you were alive.
Yeah, a lifetime's worth of accumulated mercury and other heavy metals, a bellyfull of e. coli, and any parasites, viruses, and prescription drugs you happened to have whe
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I'm glad you at least clicked on the link, but you've been selective. The article:
"A human body usually contains a negative caloric value, meaning that energy is required to combust it. This is a result of the high water content; all water must be vaporized which requires a very large amount of thermal energy.
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 32 m3 (105 ft3) of natural gas, or 3 l
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Yes, cremation requires energy input: my point all along has been that that input is tiny compared to what a living human uses over any length of time: it amounts to a few kg of carbon. Your post doesn't counter that point.
Accumulated mercury doesn't go away during cremation, but people typically keep the cremains rather than dumping them back into their food supply, and crematoria are starting to take this issue seriously. And yes, all animals pose a drug and pathogen risk even now, which is why we typic
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The environmental value of your body's chemical components is totally negligible compared to what you consume over your lifetime.
This is oversimplification to the point of just plain wrong. There are chemicals in your body (and your food) that took centuries of effort and huge investments of energy for the biosphere to put together just right so you could live on them. No, I'm not talking the chemical energy in the molecular bonds, I'm referring to the long, convoluted path from inorganic raw material to useful proteins and other specialized molecules that life depends on. It is an insult to life and our planet to just burn them into
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I mean, whatever you and your family want to do with your body is fine with me, but this is just idiotic from an environmental perspective. The environmental value of your body's chemical components is totally negligible compared to what you consume over your lifetime. I mean, I eat my weight's worth of food in a few months, so returning my body's nitrogen to the farmland is almost worthless. My share of fossil fuel burning is about 17 tonnes of carbon per year, so cremating the couple of kilograms of carbon I contain makes no difference.
The only real environmental problem with burial is that it ties up valuable urban land in a cemetery forever. Which is definitely an issue, but it's easy to solve: just get yourself cremated. This composting thing is expensive, unsafe, and a waste of time.
Multiply these figures by the approximate number of people who died per day last year (153,424) and the numbers are no longer negligible.
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totally negligible
That might be true, but the continuous stream of valuable nutrients (especially hosphorus!) that used to simply be returned to the ground in the form of shit and bodies that are now either buried deeply or dumped in wastewater is probably huge. We cannot keep taking stuff from the environment and dump it in the sea or in graves and expect this not to have an impact. About 1% of the human body is phosporus. We contain 4% of total yearly phosporus. After burying a few hundred years worth of human bodies this
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Your point is invalid because you used the "from an XXX perspective". This is the latest scourge of market/executive-speak that is sweeping American business.
You do realize that point of view is just as old as humanity. It isn't a recent fad to attempt to consider other peoples' viewpoints. And you should welcome any market/executive-speak that actually acknowledges that there are other viewpoints out there rather than foolishly treat usage of it as some deeply flawed litmus test for a imaginary validity.
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Agree, except that it's a non-renewable resource: once a cemetery, always a cemetery, and there's a social taboo against using them as public parks or letting them revert to nature. I first started thinking about this when my commute took me past some of the big cemeteries on the north side of Chicago. Square miles filled with the corpses of just one century's worth of Chicagoans. Give it another few centuries, and the dead will own
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Agree, except that it's a non-renewable resource: once a cemetery, always a cemetery, and there's a social taboo against using them as public parks or letting them revert to nature. I first started thinking about this when my commute took me past some of the big cemeteries on the north side of Chicago. Square miles filled with the corpses of just one century's worth of Chicagoans. Give it another few centuries, and the dead will own more land than the living.
I've always kind of wondered: in millions of years, will whatever we've evolved into or whatever evolved to replace us find our large cemetaries (think Arlington or the cemetaries you described) as excellent sources of oil?
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Your point that most cemeteries are eventually reused is well taken, though Americans are very *very* resistant to that, probably because they can afford to be.
Presence of pharmaceuticals (Score:2)
With the number of pills taken by the elderly these days, not to mention people who die in the hospital who may have all sorts of compounds pumped into them before they die, I wonder if the composting process fully breaks them down, or at least to safe levels. I didn't see any mention of it in TFA.
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Making a complete guess, since the concentrations in the body were likely non-lethal to begin with (unless it's what killed the person) the chances of it being in the soil at any kind of harmful levels after it has been rained on over and over again while the body rots is probably vanishingly small.
Soil-ent green? (Score:2)
Happening already (Score:5, Informative)
in cemetery - happy trees there.
With this project though - the fact how bones are handled is totally left out. They sure won't compose any time soon.
For composting, skull needs to be cracked open, bones ground up and soft body parts chopped into small pieces, like 2" dia, otherwise no composting, gets into stinky anaerobic process. A body, maybe 180 lbs > 60 % water, very challenging to compost, needs tons of carbon (wood) to compensate.
In recycling organic waste, let's say from restaurants or supermarkets, the major problem to get this material composted is to offset the water content with wood.
If reality kicks in with composting human bodies and gets public, people will be getting upset.
Looks like a very loony project - scamming airheads.
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For composting, skull needs to be cracked open, bones ground up and soft body parts chopped into small pieces,
It's been done [onsugar.com]
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For composting, skull needs to be cracked open, bones ground up and soft body parts chopped into small pieces,
It's been done [onsugar.com]
Movie Fargo has a method too - all nothing good for kickstarter...
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No problem. As part of the new burial rituals, the grieving widow pull starts the wood chipper and the pallbearers feed in the corpse, casket, and an entire bouquet of roses. It's very respectful and dignified, assumi
Bio-urn? (Score:3)
This explains ... (Score:2)
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Reminds me of the scene in the movie Better Off Dead:
"Aww, what to we have here? Looks like somebody threw out a perfectly good white boy."
Soilent green (Score:2)
When I'm dead (Score:2)
You can feed me to the crows for all it matters.
A New Religion (Score:3)
"Environmentalism is the religion of choice for urban atheists" - Michael Crichton
Prior art: Johnny Cash (Score:2)
viz. the song 'Look at them beans'.
Hmm (Score:2)
Can somebody (or some body) explain why this is "equitable"?
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Safely and gently? (Score:2)
Woodchipper (Score:2)
The real problem with an idea like this is all the religious types. Some of them will literally become homicidal over something like this because of their beliefs. Since we can't seem to shake off the whole 'religion' thing
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How do you know?
It's a pretty good assumption. The odds are in favour of there not being some magic afterlife, on the grounds that there has been not one shred of evidence to suggest such a thing might exist.
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How do you know?
Does it really matter? With or without an afterlife, once the brain is dead you are no longer in that body. Funerals and corps preserving are for the living, the dead are dead, and no longer care. I say let body decompose and return to the earth, just like every other living thing.
Re:Incinerate me (Score:5, Interesting)
And mix the ashes with a tad of soil and use that to plant a tree in a vase, when the tree grows a little, transplant it to ground.
But DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES compost me!
PS: In reality, my ashes will be thrown at sea. BUT DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES compost me!
Cannot imagine whay that would bother you. Composting will certainly give back to the earth and to future generations.
I have to note that I wanted cremated and flushed down the toilet at either a stripper bar or McDonald's. But this could be interesting. I'm envisioning my corpse being fed to one of those instant grinders like they use for rooster chicks (since only the hens lay eggs, and it's about a 50:50 mix at birth, so you do the math - then turning me into a nice compost for flowers or veggies.
Would vegans refuse to eat veggies grown from human content compost?
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I'm thinking composting me would result in a lot of toxins and heavy metals being added to the soil...
Re:Incinerate me (Score:5, Funny)
Would vegans refuse to eat veggies grown from human content compost?
Just tell them it's soylent green.
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Would vegans refuse to eat veggies grown from human content compost?
Just tell them it's soylent green.
But I gave up soy for Lent.
Ugh..I apologize, I've wanted to uses that combination of words forever.
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Like this urge I have to sometime shout "Theater" in a crowded fire? I'm not likely to get the opportunity, and really don't want it, but if I'm ever in one....
Like I was at a big fight, and a Hockey game broke out.
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Because the idea of someone tending and revering the rotting meat sack like it's a sacred artifact is kinds of creepy. Embalming it so you can pretend it's not dead is even creepier.
I sure would (OK, I'm a vegetarian), for the same reason I don't agree with using human waste as compost ... humans are dirty, carry plenty of disease, and a modern human is mostly processed crap.
Which means I assume t
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At what point is it OK to eat anything, then? There's going to be some form of human and other animal residue in any soil that's cultivated for food crops. It might be the farmer dropping a deuce out in the paddock because he/she couldn't be bothered going back to the farmhouse, miles away. It could be skin flakes and sweat, it could be bird droppings, a decomposing snake or rat. I'm not dissing your beliefs, I would really like to know where you draw the line.
Although there's bound to be some accumulated h
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Because the idea of someone tending and revering the rotting meat sack like it's a sacred artifact is kinds of creepy.
Hard to imagine that you'd intentionally rot something is treating it as a sacred artifact. The crap in that article about teh loving family wrapping the sorpse in linen is just some goofy crap about people that might find it off-putting.
There isn't anything at all unnatural about the decomposition process.
Would vegans refuse to eat veggies grown from human content compost?
I sure would (OK, I'm a vegetarian), for the same reason
So how do you keep animal corpse byproducts out of the food you eat? Or do y
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You know why we have E-coli outbreaks? Because animal waste and other garbage contaminates food.
You know why we have things like "mad cow disease"? Because some idiot decided grinding up sheep to feed to cows made sense -- despite that cows are herbivores and not evolved to ingest sheep.
My father made his own garden compost for a lot of years, and quite frankly meat caused more pr
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It's true that a small compost pile cannot handle meat, but industrial scale piles can because they generate much more heat, which also kills off the bacteria.
Green bin programs collect kitchen scraps including meat, fish and bones in addition to the usual vegetable matter. All of it is composted.
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When I lived in town and also had room for a convenient compost pile, all food scraps that were deemed unsuitable to be fed to the dog were composted (aside from, perhaps, bulk used cooking oil).
This was done very indiscriminately. Vegetable matter, cooked meat, raw meat, bones, exoskeletons from shellfish: Whatever we didn't/wouldn't eat got composted. Paper plates and napkins, too.
The vegetable matter did its usual and unsurprising thing. The meat was either picked clean by scavengers if left uncovere
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You know why we have E-coli outbreaks? Because animal waste and other garbage contaminates food.
No shit? That's a joke son. One thing is pretty simple. Clean the food. Cook the food.
Here's a story that will make you cringe. My Grandmother raised 8 healthy strapping children during the great depression. Shae was an incredible gardener. Her secret? manure tea.
She kept chickens as well. Scooped up the manure and put it in a barrel that colleccted rainwater off one of the sheds. Every so often, she'd dip an old saucepan in the water and give the plants a little drink of chickenshit tea. Not a lot y
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Would vegans refuse to eat veggies grown from human content compost?
They already eat food fertilized with animal waste and keep carnivores as pets. Don't necessarily look for consistency.
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I've already made my preferences known to my family:
"Get six jolly cowboys to carry my coffin.
Six dance-hall maidens to bear up my pall.
Throw bunches of roses all over my coffin.
Roses to deaden the clods as they fall."
Then beat the drum slowly, play the Fife lowly.
Play the dead march as you carry me along.
Take me to the green valley, lay the sod o'er me,
I'm a young cowboy and I know I've done wrong."
Re:Pretty cool (Score:4, Interesting)
I was looking into the same thing a couple years ago and came to the same conclusion. It ain't easy. Even in states where it is legal, there are few choices. If I recall correctly, I found two locations in my state where a natural burial is possible, tho I may have extended my search to neighboring states. They still require a container because reasons but at least it can be biodegradable.
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There are places that allow you to be buried in a pet cemetery [philly.com]. Cheaper.
My sister will green bury people along with their pets @ Eloise Woods [eloisewoods.com].
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There are places that allow you to be buried in a pet cemetery [philly.com]. Cheaper.
I saw that movie. It doesn't turn out well.
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I have always said this is the way I want to be buried. No embalming and no coffin. Just bury me in dirt and let the bugs have at me. I have looked in to it and it's actually a very difficult thing to do in most places because it's illegal to be buried this way.
Nothing says you have to buy the shiny metal coffin from the funeral director.
Skip the embalming and just get buried in a coffin made out of cheap pine. The carbon in the wood would actually help you compost into reasonably good soil.
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I'd rather be cremated. Don't waste any valuable land on my remains, and if you can make use of the heat from my burning corpse feel free.
Oooh, sorry, cremation is external application of heat, typically burning propane, but in some cases you can use oil or wood.
The combustion of your body is minimal.
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I was actually thinking of just using any waste heat for something useful; not that my remains would be useful for fuel. There was even a news story not so long ago where a municipal pool was partly heated by the exhaust from a nearby crematorium.
As for the post further down about space issues, there may be plenty of room in the US but for an extreme counter-example look at places like Japan where cremation is definitely the norm, in part because there just isn't the room for conventional burials. We're not
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Those problems have been there since Victorian times. There used to be a dead train out of London, running from a dedicated [deadicated? - Ed] station. With, of course, separate classes so that the dead nobs wouldn't have to mix with the dead oiks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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I'm not sure. Consider the nature of reincarnation. I don't know where I'm going with this.
Usually, I say I want to be cremated because I don't trust the living to respect my body, since I have body parts of both genders. I always imagine they'd do something more fucked up to it than they already have, just to make a good looking young man in that coffin. So, I want it burned in the event that a Matheson "What Dreams May Come" afterlife is the true fate of souls. Then I can lol as I watch the monstrosi
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Yes, dirt is unsanitary. In fact, decomposing biological material is one of the key things that makes dirt useful.
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Actually, after something's been dead for a while, it tends to become rather inhospitable to the microbes that cause disease in living creatures. There's a few diseases that can survive the death of their host, but that tends to be the exception rather than the rule. And if you cook the corpse thoroughly at some point in the process then even those shouldn't be an issue.
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Just how much Arsenic is your typical person walking around with?
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Humans, at the top of the food chain, do tend to concentrate heavy metals though. I think that is one argument against composting and using human waste for farming, along with the obvious pathogen concerns.
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I think if you were walking around with a lethal dose it would be sort of evident. And once you're mixed in with all the potato peelings it'll be dispersed again.
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Evident by being a corpse, you mean? :p
I don't mean a lethal dose. It's just like eating tuna.
Re:Pretty cool (Score:4, Interesting)
That this "idea" comes from Seattle should be one of your first clues that this is a bad idea.
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Re:Pretty cool (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Reuse human waste (Score:4, Interesting)
Medication is a huge issue when it comes to human waste. Lots and lots and lots of the drugs we take pass nasty by products into our waste that aren't easily removed. So one of the challenges around waste treatment plants is the disposal of the solid/sludge component. It isn't something that you could use as fertilizer without health impacts.
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Here's a thought - put the corpses through an industrial grinder to reduce them to slop, then dispose of the slop way out in the ocean.
Result? A reduction of atmospheric CO2 from algal blooms. Win-win, I say.
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As the book says, direct shit(human)-to-farm in a tight loop is a very bad idea on earth - bacteria and parasites that do well in (but not for) people are given an ideal transmission vector. An example disease is Amoebiasis (had it, not fun). It is very common in developing nations, where these kinds of farming practices are sometimes employed. But a composting toilet solves this. And good, modern ones can do so without any smells or unpleasantness.
I reckon Elon Musk/Tesla should do a composting toilet. It
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Actually you can compost meat just fine, it just needs to be processed differently than vegetable matter if you want to avoid the stench and potential disease issues. Though I think even normal composting will work if you're scrupulous enough about turning it regularly and keeping the temperature up.
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Any small animal the cat killed we'd throw into the compost bin and the worms didn't seem to mind.