Ever thought about what you’re going to do with your body after you’re done with
it?
Have you considered covering it in cow manure?
Hey meatbags, Julian here for DNews at YouTube Space LA.
I know that intro is a little macabre, but it’s true, one day your body isn’t going
to really have you in it anymore.
At that point there are a few options for what you can do with it.
You can preserve it and bury it in a box, entomb it in stone, or burn it to ash and
let your family keep you over their mantle.
But as the Lion King teaches us, there is a circle of life and all of these options
kind of take you out of it.
According to the New York Times, that’s why Katrina Spade is hoping to make the first
ever human composting facility in Seattle, because of course it would be in Seattle.
Composting is basically turbocharging nature’s decomposition process.
By adding moisture and carbon rich material to carrion in stages, the microbes that break
down organic material can reach a fever pitch.
Literally, they’ll work so hard and fast they’ll heat up the compost pile up to a
170 degrees (77C).
As a bonus, that’s hot enough to kill a lot of pathogens in the pile.
The end result is called humus, which is a nutrient rich dark brown soil, and though
spelled similarly, it has nothing to do with the delicious chickpea paste that goes great
on pita chips.
In places like a forest floor, decomposition to humus will happen naturally to all carcasses,
it doesn’t matter if it’s human or another animal.
The nutrients in the humus are then used by plants to grow, the plants use the sunlight
to make food for animals, the animals eventually die and decompose and become food for plants.
It’s an elegant cycle of life and death and for hundreds of thousands of years, humans
were part of it.
But starting in the early days of human civilization, we began removing ourselves from the process.
Sometimes we did it for the dead’s sake: the Egyptians believed they would need things
they had in life for the journey afterwards, so it was important to them their bodies were
preserved.
Sometimes we do it for our own sake: we’re respectful to the bodies of our dead as a
way of honoring their memory and easing our own emotional pain.
That’s the biggest problem Spade faces in her goal to build a human composting facility.
There doesn’t need to be a major scientific breakthrough to do it, many farms already
compost dead livestock.
But say the words “Human Composting” and suddenly everyone pictures someone’s leg
sticking out of a green bin with coffee grounds and banana peels on top of it.
Spade’s compromise is to have the best of both worlds: a respectful ceremony and procession
for the mourners who deliver their loved one’s body to the top of a three story tall composting
vault with up to 30 other deceased.
Slowly the body will work its way down and eventually out the bottom comes humus.
Spade estimates each body will make about a cubic meter’s worth of nutrient-rich soil!
Yes, it’s not lost on me that a woman named Spade is trying to turn bodies into dirt.
Right now because of our perceptions on how the dead should be treated, it’s not exactly…
legal.
But maybe perceptions will change.
Nobody gets wrapped in gauze with their organs stuffed in jars like the egyptians used to.
Even cremation wasn’t common 50 years ago, but is considered totally normal today.
There’s even a company that sells biodegradable urns with seeds in them to turn cremated bodies
into trees.
The difference between that and composting, is human ash isn’t as nutrient rich, but
the composting process is a lot more…
icky.
In my opinion, I’m all for it.
I think it’s a nice way to return a body to nature and in an elegant way, let them
live on.
Just so long as we don’t turn their bodies directly into food: I draw the line at Soylent
Green.
I kind of glossed over the specifics on what happens to your decomposing, rotting flesh
after you're done with it…
Luckily for you, Trace explains all that down here.
What are your thoughts on human composting?
Would you do it?
I know I would, if I didn’t already have plans to shoot myself into space.
Let us know in the comments and I’ll see you next time on DNews.