Slashdot Mirror
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."
That sounds unsanitary.
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.
Conversely, I do have a lot of electrolytes - it's what plants crave.