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Oregon has legalized human composting
- cascom 5y agoWhat happens to embedded e-waste/trash in humans (pace makers, artificial hips, implants, etc.)?
- chungy 5y agoSeems it would be easy to remove non-compostable materials first.
- javajosh 5y agoI wonder if they could be recycled? Not joking. Those hip replacement parts are incredibly expensive; I'm sure there are folks who are in need and could use a cheaper option.
- rscho 5y agoThey are recycled in some places. Such as sub-saharan Africa
- BBC-vs-neolibs 5y agoIn Sweden they used to reuse pacemakers a couple decades back. Don't know about now. I think also American pacemakers are exported to India.
- doggodaddo78 5y agoRepo Men (2010)
- ChrisRR 5y agoRepo! The Genetic Opera (2008)
- doggodaddo78 5y agoGoogling would answer your questions. Pacemakers are removed carefully, especially if they include RTGs. http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2015/ph241/degraw2/ http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2015/ph241/degraw2/ Prosthetic implants are typically not removed. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20140311-body-parts-that-live-after-death https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20140311-body-parts-that-...
- Supermancho 5y agoIn the US, if possible, my heart valve will be cut out of my cadaver and sent back to the manufacturer for analysis. The devices from my body, that have been replaced over time, were tested until failure. The FDA is very interested in performance metrics of implanted devices. The materials are not recycled in the US afaik.
- paulpauper 5y agoprobably pales in comparison to other waste
- giardini 5y agoI was told by an elderly foreign gentleman that he made his living by removing such things from bodies before burial or cremation. He said that the metals in teeth were most of his business.
- chucka9 5y agoThe metals in vascular stents and coils is valuable too (but imagine trying to retrieve those). I know someone who saved up the ones dropped or otherwise opened and not used on a cath lab. I’m not sure what he did after that.
- datameta 5y ago> Cremation–in which a body is burned into ash—is an energy suck and emits damaging pollutants and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming. > a corpse is placed in a cylinder with organic materials, like wood chips, plants, and straw, then heated and turned repeatedly for several weeks with a hook until it’s broken down into a nutrient-rich soil I wonder how much energy it takes to complete the composting process and how they can ensure that the electricity needed (even if less than cremation) is generated by sustainable methods.
- soco 5y agoI would think bone doesn't break down much during this process. So what are we left to do with the mixed-up skeleton?
- HKH2 5y agoMake jelly?
- verisimilitude 5y agoGiven prions, I would imagine this would be a step backward for public health.
- wavefunction 5y agoThat assumes prions.
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- helge9210 5y agoSoylent Green is people! ©
- doggodaddo78 5y agoOy! Get back here you!
- doggodaddo78 5y agoPeople didn't watch Cloud Atlas. D:
- rubyfan 5y agoYou beat me to it
- elif 5y agoI was really excited thinking this was going to be about humanure.
- wonderwonder 5y agoWhy can't people just opt to be buried without embalming or a casket? Sounds like a nice way to go buried whole and maybe with some sort of tree seed that grows over where you are laid. Not going to lie on a personal level, the composting process sounds terrible.
- BBC-vs-neolibs 5y agoCardboard caskets are half-way there.
- djaychela 5y agoI think there is the option (at least in the UK [1]) to be buried in a coffin which is quickly biodegradable, thereby speeding up the recycling process. [1] - https://naturalendings.co.uk/green-coffins/ https://naturalendings.co.uk/green-coffins/
- rapnie 5y agoThere's this Dutch startup growing coffins with fungus. https://futurism.com/living-cocoon-coffin-fungus https://futurism.com/living-cocoon-coffin-fungus
- greenburial 5y ago"Green Burials" [1] are gaining in popularity. Sadly I know this because a young person that committed suicide opted for such a burial. I imagine the older generations are more concerned with tradition and religion. [1] https://www.nhfuneral.org/green-burial-cemeteries-in-the-us-and-canada.html https://www.nhfuneral.org/green-burial-cemeteries-in-the-us-...
- rjbwork 5y agoPersonally I'd opt for a Mongolian style sky burial. They just take you out onto a mountainside, cut you up a little bit, and the carrion birds and other animals come to eat you up. Seems like the quickest way to return your elements to the earth.
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- ed_balls 5y agoI wonder what is the risk of prions diseases. > 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 3 m3 (105 ft3) of natural gas, or 3 liters of fuel oil (0.8 US gallons). Additional energy is necessary to make up for the heat capacity ("preheating") of the furnace, fuel burned for emissions control, and heat losses through the insulation and in the flue gases. > As a result, crematories are most often heated by burners fueled by natural gas. LPG (propane/butane) or fuel oil may be used where natural gas is not available. These burners can range in power from 150 to 400 kilowatts (0.51 to 1.4 million British thermal units per hour). >Crematories heated by electricity also exist in India, where electric heating elements bring about cremation without the direct application of flame to the body. >Coal, coke, and wood were used in the past, heating the chambers from below (like a cooking pot). This resulted in an indirect heat and prevented mixing of ash from the fuel with ash from the body. The term retort when applied to cremation furnaces originally referred to this design. More eco-friendly option would be to use pellet or electricity.
- 1-6 5y agoSince prions are found abundantly in the head, just bury or lock away the skulls and treat them like nuclear waste. Compost or cremate the rest of the body.
- Y_Y 5y agoThis is a solved problem! My startup is building modern, cutting-edge catacombs where we're redefining what it means to have a huge, underground maze full of decomposing human heads.
- dependsontheq 5y agoI think your funding should primarily come from Kickstarter, I think that there will be very few lawsuits of people who want to deposit their skull.
- boringg 5y ago
- uggwar 5y ago"It is every citizen's final duty to go into the tanks and become one with all the people." - Chairman Sheng-ji Yang
- senectus1 5y agoI'd be just as happy to know i was being disposed of via a magma flow or something. I really don't care whats done with my body after i'm done with it... just as long as its disposal isn't going to do further damage to the world or its inhabitants...
- warlog 5y agoMake sure they take your car keys out of your pocket before dumping you... ...because, man, they're gone.
- gandalfian 5y agoI always remember Cardinal Newman instructing for a load of compost to be dumped on top of his coffin to prevent there being anything to dig up and sanctify. They still tried a hundred years later but all they found was a brass plaque and earth...
- zamadatix 5y agoSeems like an impressive timescale to remove all the bone too.
- tastyfreeze 5y agoAn active compost pile can consume an animal carcass of any size, bones and all, in the 60-90 days. This is the way nature recycles resources and she has gotten very good at it over the eons.
- maliker 5y agoHuh, he was also sainted by the church. Patron saint of composting?
- exolymph 5y ago> Newman's beatification was still dragging on fitfully when Pope Benedict fast-tracked him two years ago. On a wet October day in 2008, an assortment of priests and grave-diggers arrived at the cemetery in Rednal, armed with shovels and a mechanical digger. They planned to transfer Newman's remains to a tomb back at his church in Birmingham. Nothing was found except the brass name-plate and a few bits of rotten wood. A solution to the mystery was discovered in the archives of the Birmingham Post. A journalist at the burial reported that, on Newman’s orders, the grave was filled with compost to hasten decomposition. His corpse (someone described him in great age as toothless and shrivelled like "a shrimp") had apparently dissolved into the soil. He had cheated the relic hunters. https://www.ft.com/content/0e6f301c-baea-11df-9e1d-00144feab49a https://www.ft.com/content/0e6f301c-baea-11df-9e1d-00144feab... for anyone else who was curious :)
- 11235813213455 5y agoThis makes so much sense, I prefer that my body can be used to grow plants/trees and whatever vegetals rather than getting putrefied in a coffin, and using land space for no reason
- potiuper 5y agoEnvironmentally naive: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/cemetery-soil-human-remains https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/cemetery-soil-human-re... Promession, which is legal in the United Kingdom, Sweden, and South Korea, but not yet a reality is a better solution: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HD5Gt80H6s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HD5Gt80H6s
- tisthetruth 5y agoI want to get dropped into an active volcano when I go. The heat is already there so no need for a furnace or manufacturing of a coffin. I guess the helicopter ride would be the greatest emitter.
- paulpauper 5y agoRecompose, the country’s first human composting funeral home does it like this: a corpse is placed in a cylinder with organic materials, like wood chips, plants, and straw, then heated and turned repeatedly for several weeks with a hook until it’s broken down into a nutrient-rich soil that can be delivered back to the family or used for planting. It's like what the mafia used to do to dissolve bodies
- mc32 5y agoI mean, why do all this theater when there is a much better long lived and respected tradition: Burial-at-Sea. Roughly 60% of the US pop lives within a 100 miles of a seacoast. Wrap them in something organic for presentation, a weight stone, then, go out to sea (with family along option -others may be ok with remote video) and let them slip into the ocean like sailors buried at sea. No creepiness, no vicarious cannibalism via eating veggies nourished by uncle Vinnie or aunt Mathilda or anything. Traditional burial-at-sea.
- ssully 5y agoAs someone who lives in the middle of the United States, shipping my body out to the closest ocean for burial and flying family out to witness my burial doesn't seem very practical.
- mc32 5y agoWe have inland seas. The Great Lakes are vast and they can be barged out to sea (we’d need agreements with Canada; but feasible) It may not be cost effective for some... but a large percentage (~60%) of the US pop live within a 100 miles from seashores...
- jacobolus 5y agoMy understanding is that the EPA does not allow you to dump human corpses in lakes. You also need to go >3 miles out to sea. https://www.epa.gov/ocean-dumping/burial-sea https://www.epa.gov/ocean-dumping/burial-sea
- ElijahLynn 5y agoThis is really huge!!! I'll definitely choose this route when my time comes! Open burials for pets and such are also legal here in Oregon as long as it is 100 or so feet away from a water source, like a stream, pond, lake etc.
- stuart78 5y agoFully support this for myself, though I don't think I need my composed remains to be returned to the family. Not sure why, but that feels more grim than ashes on the mantle (though I don't feel a need for that either).
- ElijahLynn 5y agoOne example on the benefit of being returned to the family is that they can take you and plant a tree in you and then you grow into a tree, likely near the family, so that you can still be with them in a physical way!
- stuart78 5y agoIf they decree to tree me, I’ll be their tree with glee.
- grishka 5y agoThese comments are so depressing. I really hope that we'll figure out a way to reverse aging in the coming decades so death becomes optional.
- amanaplanacanal 5y agoI’m totally with you on that one! I’m getting old though, I don’t expect those technologies to arrive soon enough for me to take advantage of them. Some sort of green burial is my likely future.
- grishka 5y agoAs a last resort, you could have your body frozen to at least give yourself a non-zero chance of being resurrected at some point in the future. Not dying in the first place is of course a much better option, but if you have to, cryonics is your best bet.
- developer93 5y agoCan you imagine living for ever? We'd have even more of a population problem, unless you can find a way to stop having kids, and even then I feel like it would make for a stagnant society.
- Trias11 5y agoNeed a highway ad: "Please volunteer for human composting. Recycle yourself!"
- DesiLurker 5y agoI just want to be cremated and my ashes scattered on moon. IMO it could be a huge business opportunity.
- enriquto 5y agolol what the fuck? if you have all that money do something useful, or at least indulge yourself while you are alive
- mod 5y agoPaying to have yourself scattered on the moon is indulging yourself while you're alive.
- DesiLurker 5y agothere are folks who pay to convert their ashes into diamonds, maybe I'll do both 'cause y'er not the boss of me. but seriously if someone has money for something like this how do you judge that they did not live their life fully? at least its better than taking up permanent real estate in a cemetery.
- rglover 5y agoPass.
- bolangi 5y agoAccording to Dr. Elaine Ingham, "the compost tea lady", a large compost pile designed to be anaerobic can consume cow carcasses. It does take several months.
- tastyfreeze 5y ago>designed to be anaerobic aerobic - with oxygen Anaerobic decomposes as well but it is not compost. Anaerobic decomposition is putrefaction and creates the "smell of death"
- betwixthewires 5y agoNo, actually, they meant anaerobic. There's a trend nowadays where organic matter is steeped in water in a sealed container and allowed to decay without oxygen and the water is used to water plants, hence "compost tea." Maybe "compost" isn't strictly a good word for it but that's what they call it.
- tastyfreeze 5y agoI have listened to many hours of Dr. Ingham. I am certain that she said aerobic. Her whole business is aerated compost and aerated compost tea. Yes, there is a trend for anerobic teas. But it didnt come from Elaine Ingham.
- bolangi 5y agoHer workshop covered both aerobic and anaerobic compost. Anaerobic composting has uses, and one is getting rid of animal carcasses.
- nashashmi 5y agoBeware of articles like these. They are PR pieces profiling the services of a company. And making it seem like everyone is doing it. and how it is all the rage.
- throwkeep 5y agoPG has an essay on that, submarine articles: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
- rhacker 5y agoRemind me to never buy soil from Oregon.
- developer93 5y agoYou know all soil is made from/has dead things in it right?
- telesilla 5y agoI hope to donate my body to science. Depending on the manner of death and location, it should be a matter of specifying it in your will.
- okareaman 5y agoHallucinogenic mushrooms are legal to grow in Oregon so I'd like have some grown on my composted body and parcel them out for a ceremony of my life
- dalbasal 5y agoThat's a lot of pressure on whoever's propogating them. Better to spread the compost somewhere they already grow (like Oregon) and collect seasonally.
- okareaman 5y agoI'm sure Shamans will become a thing now that they are legal and offer a ceremony like this.
- heavyset_go 5y ago> Better to spread the compost somewhere they already grow (like Oregon) and collect seasonally. Different species of psychedelic mushrooms have been found in almost all of the contiguous United States and Hawai'i. It used to be thought that the PNW and Southeast US were the only places they grew in the US, but new native species have been discovered in the last 20 years, and some of them are actually quite common, prolific and apparently potent.
- lph 5y agoMy mother passed away a few weeks ago. It was her wish to go with Recompose. She was a master gardener, and to her, the idea of returning to the ecosystem was so much better than cremation or a cemetery. Through Recompose, her 'soil' will be donated to a reforesting project. As you can imagine, I've ruminated a lot on this lately. What's the purpose of a tombstone, or a plaque, or an urn full of ashes? To memorialize, or to honor someone who is gone? I don't need a monument for that. I spent a couple of hours yesterday propagating roses with my six-year old daughter, her grand-daughter. That's a better way to honor my mother, I think, and she would agree. As old-world tradition and religiosity fade, we can all find our own new ways to do these things. This is 'meaning-making', an interesting term I learned recently. Incidentally, her gardening buddies were intrigued to learn about human composting. I think Recompose is going to be big.
- mrkurt 5y agoI'm sorry for your loss. I got a lot out of reading this comment and I appreciate that you shared it.
- flycaliguy 5y agoI walk around a cemetery as part of my daily walk when I let my mind wander. Two big topics in my town are real estate and reconciliation with aboriginal people. Something about this giant plot of land covered in European names just seems so strange.
- maininformer 5y agoI fully agree with you mother, may she rest in peace. I have been thinking as well, what if after passing away of a family member we plant their favorite fruit tree with them. After generations there will be a beautiful garden. People usually laugh at this idea; maybe rightfully so, but there is something profound in it about feeding the plants and by proxy animals and fellow people who fed us.
- ford_o 5y agoFor one, tombstone cannot lead to prion desease.
- sloshnmosh 5y agoIt gives new meaning to: Grandma makes the best potatoes
- xwdv 5y agoIf a plant such as a tree is grown from your remains don’t you basically “become” the tree? I’ve always thought it would be great if one could become some kind of long lasting tree that could last generations and could be visited upon by ancestors, but I don’t know how practical such graveyard forests would be.
- mark-wagner 5y agoJust like the "fathertrees" from Card's book "Speaker for the Dead."
- rkagerer 5y agoThat's neat I've felt the same instinct.
- arkush 5y ago"Recompose, the country’s first human composting funeral home does it like this: a corpse is placed in a cylinder with organic materials, like wood chips, plants, and straw, then heated and turned repeatedly for several weeks with a hook until it’s broken down into a nutrient-rich soil that can be delivered back to the family or used for planting." Every time I read about using human corpses to produce soil, I recall this article: "Grass plants bind, retain, uptake and transport infectious prions" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4449294/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4449294/ In the past I read about this or similar startup and they mentioned that they don't accept corpses of people diagnosed with prion diseases. IMHO, this is not enough. For example, a person with early CJD could die of other cause and never be diagnosed. Besides that, sporadic CJD isn't as rare as "1 per million" (still rare though). Here is an interesting video about prion diseases that, among other things, discusses epidemiology ("1 in 7000 US deaths"): "Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease and Other Prion Diseases - Brian Appleby, M.D." https://youtu.be/4vyuby6gibs?t=328 https://youtu.be/4vyuby6gibs?t=328 Testing of corpses based on Protein Misfolding Cyclic Amplification (PMCA) might come in handy (if it's not too expensive). It is claimed to be very sensitive. Here is presentation by Dr. Rodrigo Morales (one of the authors of the article about prion uptake by plants that I linked above): "Texas CWD Symposium: Pre-symptomatic prion detection" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8ZX8sHAPUw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8ZX8sHAPUw P.S.: Hopefully, this eco-burial fad wouldn't catch on. How about deep sea burials?
- yosamino 5y agoI hope when it's time for me, I can simply be flushed down the drain: > Alkaline hydrolysis is also used in the agricultural industry to sterilize animal carcasses that may pose a health hazard, because the process inactivates viruses, bacteria, and prions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkaline_hydrolysis_(body_disposal) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkaline_hydrolysis_(body_disp...
- drdavid 5y agoI'd like a sky burial in Tibet, but that ain't gonna happen (at least not legally) unless things change.
- devy 5y agoAlkaline hydrolysis (water cremation) is another green way of disposing human and animal remains. It's a low cost option too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkaline_hydrolysis_(body_disposal) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkaline_hydrolysis_(body_disp...
- qwerty456127 5y agoI actually find anti-decay measures applied to corpses disgusting. I feel like corpses should be buried raw right into soil or in plain wood coffins at max, not marinated in formaldehyde and put in non-compostable coffins.
- orthecreedence 5y agoI have a hard time with this too. For a long time my preferred burial would be wrapping me in a blanket and burying me somewhere in the woods. I know it's not practical, but certainly a nicer thought than pumping me full of preservatives and locking me into a $10K sarcophagus. Let the earth eat me when I die.
- slim 5y agoWhat you are describing is Muslim ritual
- matthewmorgan 5y agoAren't humans full of mercury and other nasty substances?
- ClumsyPilot 5y agoI don't think the public health risks are justified -> I'd rather go with cremation, done once, no remains, graves or other BS.
- crb002 5y ago?? Why not just do sky burial.
- qPM9l3XJrF 5y agoComposting releases CO2 into the atmosphere. Despite the treehugging vibe, it actually makes global warming worse.
- developer93 5y agoI believe that's only true for anaerobic composting, the stinky one, using mostly greens (nitrogen). Aerobic composting, which most people do in their back yard, mixing greens and browns (carbon) is fine.
- hedora 5y agoI was hoping this was about humanure: https://sustainablefoodtrust.org/articles/human-manure-closing-the-nutrient-loop/ https://sustainablefoodtrust.org/articles/human-manure-closi...
- pabs3 5y agoI wonder what kind of heavy metals and other toxins accumulate within the human lifetime?
- kazinator 5y ago> Before human composting gained traction, green burials—in which the body is prepared without chemicals and planted underground in an organic, biodegradable container, often underneath a tree sapling—emerged in 1998 as an alternative to traditional high-impact burial methods, according to the Green Burial Council. Are we talking 1998 A.D. or B.C.?
- 4b11b4 5y agoA friend this to me before seeing it on HN.. and this was my sarcastic but mostly serious response: The royal colony of Oregon among the imperial nation of the United States allows for human beings to return to the Earth when they die. In all seriousness... I'm going to dig a whole in the ground and my friends and family can literally drag me in there. This ridiculousness goes the way back to the "embalming industry" circa civil war. edit: typo