“I’ll Compost Your Corpse” – The (Organic) Demise of Ethical Man
by Sami Grover, Carrboro, NC, USA on 04. 6.07
We have previously reported on the BBC’s Ethical Man, AKA Justin Rowlatt, here and here. While Justin is still very much alive and well, the time has come for him to bury his more altruistic alter-ego. In a fitting end to this educational series of reports, he explores an intriguing offer from a viewer – to compost his corpse. As it turns out, this isn’t that easy to do. The environmental problems of cremation and burial are duly discussed, in some detail:
“Apparently, the problem with the way a corpse decomposes at the bottom of a grave is that there isn’t enough oxygen to get a good aerobic compost going. The main by-products of aerobic decomposition include carbon dioxide and water meanwhile anaerobic decomposition produces methane - 23 times as powerful a greenhouse-gas as CO2.”
Nevertheless, it seems that burial or cremation really are the only legal options for disposing of a body in the UK at the present time. Things may be about to change however, as a radical new technique from Sweden may be introduced, involving freezing your body in liquid nitrogen, and then breaking it down into a biodegradable powder. John Crossham, however, is not impressed, arguing that there is too much embodied (sorry - I couldn't resist it) energy in the liquid nitrogen for this to make sense:
“Wouldn’t it be better just to get in a good butcher to cut the body into small and easily ‘compostable’ pieces?”
Ethical Man, may you rest in peace (or is that pieces?)…
If you don't want the carbon in your corpse to become either methane or CO2, there's a company out there that will burn your corpse to a char, and take the carbon and turn it into a diamond. Unfortunately, this is a very energy intensive process, and the energy it takes to do so will incur a CO2 footprint of its own.
Why don't they just burn the person into a char (so the bulk of the carbon remains) and crumble the char into dust and scatter that? Charred material won't decompose into methane the way anaerobic rotting flesh will, but since the burn is incomplete, the carbon remains as char rather than turning into CO2. This, I think, is the best solution. Cremate until the body is charred, rather than burned totally into ash. Crumble the char, and bury or scatter that. You won't have huge CO2 emissions nor methane emissions that way, and the stench of decomposition isn't a problem.
Would somebody recommend this to the people in the business of cremating? I've got more important things to do than to implement this option myself.
The best way is to put dead bodies into electric furnaces. This new technique, now being used to vaporise tonnes of garbage in NW Long Island, breaks everything down into its component atoms with one might zap of electricity - this produces hydrogen which can be used to power the furnace.
QED.
When I die, I wish to be mulched. Just stick my body into a tree mulching machine and collect me in a big garbage bag. Then, have some one till me into a small garden and plant Carnation seeds. When the flowers bloom have someone snip and send one to each of my friends and I will be reincarnated.
Even better than burning or decomposing in terms of environmental impact is the method used in Tibet called a sky burial. They hack the body into pieces with machete like knives and lay it out to be consumed by vultures or wild dogs. No joke, I've seen one.
Gets that energy right back into food-chain. Highly efficient if a bit macabre.
Unembalmed burial at sea (fish food) or the ancient Zoroastrian method of exposing the unembalmed body on a hilltop and letting birds eat the flesh should also be considered. It is only fair that a human body that was nourished by countless animal and plant life forms should make itself available to these same life forms when it becomes a source of food itself (as a corpse).
Remember to extract kidneys, pancreas, iris and whatever organs for donation before any of these methods are used to char the body.
There is another, more useful solution:
Pencils made from cremated humans:
Apparently, crabs love to eat people as much as people love to eat crabs. Since I've eaten plenty of crab in various sushi places, and plan to eat a lot more, I think it's only fair to return the favor once I'm dead.
Or I'll donate my body to one of those forensics labs that does cadaver studies, and let them put it in the woods somewhere and let it decompose naturally. I think that it's really neat that the biosphere has this way of reusing dead organic matter; I'd like my organic matter to be recycled, too.
Lara, whatever you do, short of encasing yourself in lucite and getting sent into orbit, your body will be recycled -- some methods just might take longer. :)