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Urban Death Project Aims To Rebuild Our Soil By Composting Corpses (inhabitat.com)
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."
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.
Sky burial has been practiced in Tibet for millennia.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
I already did my part. This is exactly how I disposed of my mother-in-law's corpse.
Human waste ,excrement and urine is much more plentiful and useful. Stop polluting the ocean with it in fact stop wasting it. Its the best plant fertillizer made on earth.
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!
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
isn't that a good name for a band?
Soylent Brown
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Soylent brown . . . is. pee-puhl!
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.
The person in charge of me and my stuff when I'm gone knows 1 thing: as long as I'm dead I don't care what you do with me. Cremate me, bury me, donate me to science, chop me in pieces and toss me in the trash, I don't care. Just make sure I'm dead first.
Just use a wood chipper to take care of the problem. I know it works cause I saw it on TV.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Most of them are currently breathing. I think this way they would be much more useful.
Why is Snark Required?
Where do we find the bodies free of environmental toxins and medical residues? Is this a conspiracy to abuse the last remaining tribes in the jungles of South America? How about just taking base elements for industrial production of fertilizers and other chemicals which our life depend on instead of poisoning the fields of the poor city farmers with their local produce?
I read the headline as:
"Urban Death Project Aims To Rebuild Our Soil By Composting Congress"
And thought, "What an amazingly good idea!"
Its a bit far from April 1st. Anyone else thinking of the Vivoleum candles from the yes men?
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
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.
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.
You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right.
...we'll all be on the Soylet Green diet.
It's made of people I tell you! PEEEOPLE!
"You tell everybody. Listen to me, Hatcher. You've gotta tell them! Soylent Green is people! We've gotta stop them somehow!"
Soylent Green!!!!
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.
Vegetable gardening and fishing are my top two hobbies. There's a cyclical symbiosis there, if you look for it: you can eat the fish, bury its remains in your garden, grow vegetables supplemented by that fertilizer, and then use some of those vegetables (corn kernels) to catch more fish. This is nature. At a fundamental level, what difference does it make whether it's a fish carcass or my own rotting in a compost pile? None, really, so I get where the Urban Death Project is coming from. All of us carbon-based life forms will biodegrade, some of us just break down more slowly than others. It's a matter of scale.
I'm not going to donate my future self to this project, but I understand where they're coming from. I get it. Ultimately, each one of us is just another pile of biodegradable slop. Would I accept fertilizing my vegetables with human remains? No, I don't think I could handle that. I hope humanity doesn't reach a point where that becomes a viable option.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
This is something like what my wife and I have planned.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Have gnu, will travel.
Also a good place to hide bodies
And to dirt you shall return.
Why not just eat them and poop in your yard? Same effect, and also lowers the grocery bill.
When I die, my body parts will go to people who need them. That's on my driver's license and in my will.
My parents arranged for their bodies to be donated to the Loma Linda Univ. Bodies for Science program when they died.
I think donating your heart and lungs to people who need them, or donating your body to doctors in training and to researchers, are two good options.
They could call it soil-lent green? It really is made from people, and grows green plants.
Website Just Down For Me? Find out
Yummy...
Mom started one in a corner of the backyard... in 1972. It's nearly as tall as I am now.
We had an "Ecology Bucket" way back then. All vegetable scraps and the odd clumps of catbox litter went on top. As well as all lawn clippings and other garden waste.
What didn't go in was anything that came out of an animal, that didn't come out of its rear end.
During Winter, a tarp went over, because letting it get too wet would kill it. On cold mornings, you could feel the heat radiating, as wisps of steam erupted.
Earthworms... they were delirious with joy. Drop a load on top, use the pitchfork to work it around a bit, and the Earthworms wiggled in ecstasy. On hot dry Central Valley afternoons, hose it down just a bit.
Composting Corpses, aside from any silly moral considerations, is just plain ignorant. The Flies and their multitudes of maggots will be bad enough, and rotting corpses aren't very fragrant. Also, it doesn't work. Corpses kills composting. They can extract DNA from the 14th Century London Plague Pits now...
Aquaculture is much better. Turn the corpses into Human Meal, and feed it to the delicious little fishies, thus establishing a Circle of Death.
"Soylent Green" had it all wrong. Corpses only on occasion show a green tinge; usually they tend to grayish shades of purple. Heyerdahl, on one of his voyages, tried to make ways of making Ocean Algae edible, and it not only proved impossible, it could also prove lethal. Eat only that that only feeds on the Algae, and survives it. Algae in any event doesn't sup on Floaters, they sup on the poop from those that sup on Floaters.
A cheap delicacy of my youth was "Sand Dabs"- Bottom-feeding Flatfish with eyes on the top of their heads, because that was where the threats came from. Fished out now, and they are very sensitive to pollution in any event. ... _nosy_ neighbors. Especially when an irritating Mother-In-Law goes walkabout. (Be discreet when dealing with the bones.
There isn't much to preparing them; slice the disgusting stuff off from underneath, dip in whisked egg and then spiced flour, and deep-fry them very quickly. When served with lemon juice, the entire skeleton peels up and out. Serve any remains to the Cat, and a day or two later, dump the Catbox on the Compost heap.
I'm sure that Humanboxes would work just as well, but, well,
IT'S PEOPLE! IT'S MADE OF PEOPLE!
Like I said, obligatory. But, as has been noted, it's hardly a radical thought- chances are that, no matter where you stand, there's a dead body buried beneath you. If that makes you uncomfortable, well, see if you can get up on the Cloud Ark or something.
-Z
You can feed me to the crows for all it matters.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
While the plebs of society will be used as fertilizer lol
But who does't love Soilent Green? "Soilent Green is dead people!!!!!!"
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.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
guarantee you this cunt is a fat ugly satanist
next step soylent green
You think our cities or their cemeteries are overcrowded? Move out. You think there are problems with sustainability? Stop buying iPhones and Priuses.
http://www.academia.edu/375869...
The practice of Sky Burial was at one time, pretty common, from Anatolia to China
Even today, the Parsi people (whose ancestors came from Persia - currently known as Iran) in India still practice Sky Burial
http://www.treehugger.com/cult...
In Iran, "Towers of Silence" still exist, in remote places
http://www.slate.com/blogs/atl...
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Katrina Spade? Where did they dig her up from then, eh?
Any small animal the cat killed we'd throw into the compost bin and the worms didn't seem to mind.
I think you should get out more.
"Environmentalism is the religion of choice for urban atheists" - Michael Crichton
Nuclear cremation FTW. When I die, put a 25kt device under my coffin and detonate it with all my relatives attending.
viz. the song 'Look at them beans'.
Can somebody (or some body) explain why this is "equitable"?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Izzi: Remember Moses Morales?
Tom Creo: Who?
Izzi: The Mayan guide I told you about.
Tom Creo: From your trip.
Izzi: Yeah. The last night I was with him, he told me about his father, who had died. Well Moses wouldn't believe it.
Tom Creo: Izzi...
Izzi: [embraces Tom] No, no. Listen, listen. He said that if they dug his father's body up, it would be gone. They planted a seed over his grave. The seed became a tree. Moses said his father became a part of that tree. He grew into the wood, into the bloom. And when a sparrow ate the tree's fruit, his father flew with the birds. He said... death was his father's road to awe. That's what he called it. The road to awe. Now, I've been trying to write the last chapter and I haven't been able to get that out of my head!
Tom Creo: Why are you telling me this?
Izzi: I'm not afraid anymore, Tommy.
Quoted from the movie, The Fountain.
Why not feed corpses into a mincer and then plough them into a field?
It is every citizen's final duty to go into the tanks and become one with all the people.
- Chairman Sheng-ji Yang, "Ethics for Tomorrow"
We just need to tether dead bodies to buoys out around the coastline to feed the sharks.
Should help cut down on the 15 or so shark attacks we have every year. /s
Have you ever fallen asleep at the keybhanusdiog?
Later, they can somehow link people to how the plants taste. "Fred, I always knew he was a bad seed."
I am fairly sure Toxic Dumping is against the law.
People bio-accumulate toxins that you don't want in your food. This includes heavy metals, prescription drugs and does anyone remember mad cow disease? Yeah, prions.
Soil-ent Green is people?
It will never work because of Prions. Don't know what they are? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion
I suspect the embalming fluid will reduce 'you' to a fine soup long before the end of days.
I don't believe in an 'afterlife' or 'gods' or any of that nonsense so as far as I'm concerned once I'm dead (and you'd better be damned sure I'm completely dead first!) so far as I'm concerned you can put me through a woodchipper or a giant Blendtec blender on 'Liquify' for all I care.
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 to start with, that makes an idea like this a total non-starter. Meanwhile I guess they can encourage cremation.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
It is every citizen's final duty to go into the tanks and become one with all the people.
Chairman Sheng-ji Yang, "Ethics for Tomorrow"
Given the rate that soil is being lost with modern farming techniques even composting every person that dies wouldn't replace all of the soil lost.
Composting is an aerobic decomposition process that generates enough heat to kill all pathogenic bacteria. Read any good book about composting (or even a decent pamphlet) and that is the most important thing you will learn. So, by definition, composting human remains leaves no viable pathogens. Bodies dug up in cemeteries are unsanitary because they decomposed anaerobically, at low temperatures. It is almost as if cemeteries were designed to be unsafe.
It never ceases to amaze me, just how well-rounded Slashdotters, in general, are not. Push back from your computers and go do something outside every once in a while. Grow a garden. Build a shed. Clean a stream. Something.
Doyle t Green is people!
Keeping them out of the food chain is probably a very good idea.
bury them in the ground and let the worms do their thing. What TFA is right about is that embalming chemicals and non-biodegradable caskets are stupid. Instead of cemeteries we could use parks and nature reserves. If some people still want a place where to worship their ancestors, give them the coordinates and they can pretend the soul lives on in that beautiful tree over there.