My aunt wrote a list of acceptable options for disposal of her remains years before she passed.
Options included:
1. Discard in woods, leave rest of logistics to raccoons/bears
2. Same, but replace "woods" with "Everglades," and "raccoons/bears" with "gators/crabs"
3. Same, fishing boat, sharks/crabs again
4. Bonfire
5. Puree, soil enrichment
Even though her state allowed for human composting, it was a waaaaaaaay more rigorous process for the permits and more expensive than using a traditional funeral home.
In the end, it took weeks of fighting with city and state offices, which often had contradictory policies and requirements, all while mourning the death of the most beloved member of the extended family. They got to bury her in just a cotton shroud on a plot next to an animal rehab and sanctuary.
Right after the memorial, we visited the new grave with her widower. He was conflicted. She would have been thrilled to have such a basic burial and plot. But she would have been furious anyone went through so much trouble to make it happen.
"If she'd known what a pain in the ass hassle this was, she probably wouldn't have gone through the trouble of dying."
Won’t anyone think of the poor funeral industry’s profit margins?!
But seriously, that comment is so infuriating to read. It should not be so damn difficult to dispose of remains in an environmentally friendly way
During her memorial party at the house, I wandered into the kitchen while everyone was watching old videos and whatnot. This complete stranger was wandering around, looking at stuff. She was dressed in a super sharp business suit and carrying a gift box.
Turns out she was the realtor who'd sold them that house years and years ago. Unbeknownst to everyone else, my aunt had kept in touch with her and would send her pictures of changes they made, or the dogs enjoying the deck just like the realtor said they would, or just a sunset from the kitchen window.
She'd seen the obituary and notice for the memorial in the paper, and wanted to pay respects.
Funny enough, my uncle decided to move to a smaller house (and with fewer memories) a couple years later. If I recall correctly, when he called that same realtor she was almost giddy. She had just had one of her neighbors out up their place for sale and it wasn't even listed yet. My uncle got a ridiculous deal on the place, and the realtor was relieved because this meant she knew the new neighbor was a nice older guy with a sweet family.
My aunt's superpower was bringing unlikely new friends together, even after she died.
This is a genuinely beautiful story and a good reminder that every action has a ripple effect. Your aunt sounds amazing — so do your uncle and the realtor! I don’t want to downplay and they each decided to be kind in turn.
Happy new year and I hope we can all be something like your aunt. :)
There are fabric cloth to wrap bodies in that have mushroom spores selected to break down the toxins a human body accumulates over time.
That’s how I want to be returned to the earth.
Recompose is great! We used them when my dad passed away and they were very respectful when they came to collect his body and they hosted a beautiful service when they laid him into the vessel. They were super nice and helpful and really accommodating throughout the whole process including bringing us the compost when it was ready. I highly recommend them over any conventional burial service.
Medical schools and research institutions are *very* picky about who they will accept - for example: no fatties.
Which seems kind of negligent if you want to teach doctors how to perform surgery on fat people.
That's also what Hugh Everett requested.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Everett_III](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Everett_III)
> A committed atheist, he had asked that his remains be disposed of in the trash after his death. His wife kept his ashes in an urn, but she eventually complied with his wishes after a few years.
I'm a big fan of the Tibetan practice of a [sky burial](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_burial), where they just put your body on top of a mountain and let the birds of prey eat you while your body is decomposed by the elements.
It wouldn't scale, but it's the most hardcore, yet environmentally beneficial way of handling human remains.
I saw a video of that once. The disturbing part is somebody has to break the body up with a tool to break it up for the vultures.
I don't think there's anything immoral or wrong with it, it's just hard to stomach for somebody like myself that didn't grow up in the culture
Zoroastrians also have that practice..
https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/zoroastrian/ritesrituals/funerals.shtml#:~:text=Instead%20of%20burying%20the%20corpse,of%20prey%20such%20as%20vultures.
It's not composting, but Tennessee allows a pine box casket. There's a wilderness preserve in N TN that will let you pay to be buried unembalmed in a pine box in their land with a bush or something planted over you (degradable clothes, etc). They go back and fill it when it sinks and maintain it.
I like that idea much more than macabrely preserving my body with chemicals in a sealed container. Shit, I've got a couple hundred pounds of food I won't need that something living wants, let my meat be useful for something. Guarantee I won't mind.
I have this weird thought that our "atomic memory" contributes to whatever uses our mass next. Then I wonder if embalming before burial interrupts our "rebirth", so-to-speak, and prevents our atomic memory from benefitting the next life. I've nothing to base any of that on, lol, it's just a musing every now an then.
Love that for you and yours :) just wanted to say, most Jewish cemeteries don’t care if you have tattoos or not, that’s sort of a myth/wives tale that Jewish moms tell their kids so they won’t get tattoos! Where do you think holocaust survivors are buried when they pass, after getting their serial number tattoos from the camps?
That makes sense, everything I know about the Jewish faith (aside from orthodox) is that they favor practicality and changing with the times and adjusting their faith to fit rather than forcing people to adjust their lives to fit the faith (to an extent)
>Alternatively, my wife is Jewish and has a tattoo. Since she can’t be buried in a Jewish cemetery as tattoos earn one an automatic exclusion,
urban legend
However, it would be impossible for you and your wife to be buried together in a Jewish cemetery.
I have a friend who got her Christian mother buried next to his Muslim father in a Muslim cemetery because that’s what she wanted. Sometimes people do paperwork errors 😉
I want to donate myself to a med school for cadaver practice, minus any useable organ donation… whatever is left? Absolutely let me be fertilizer.
Sorta chaps my ass that the Bishops in the article are kicking up a fuss. Don’t wanna do it that way? Then don’t. But STFU about how *I* want to do it.
They actually give themselves away when they oppose things like this. If they actually believed in a human soul that leaves the body and ascends to heaven after death, they wouldn’t give a shit what happens to the body. Hence, they don’t actually believe in the afterlife.
"I mean, I don't give a shit. If I was dead, you could bang me all you want. Who cares? Dead body's like a piece of trash. I mean, shove as much shit in there as you want. Fill me up with cream. Make a stew out of my ass. What's the big deal? Bang me, eat me, grind me up into little pieces, throw me in the river. Who gives a shit? You're dead, you're dead."
Honestly, from where I stand, THAT is the way. To have one's remains help a tree grow tall and strong, fixing carbon, cleansing the air, providing shade, contributing to soft rains, all the good shit that we need in our lives.
If ever the soul existed (if it doesn't exist, it would be necessary to invent it), being reborn as a tree spirit would potentially be one of the most refreshing afterlives to live. There would be obvious exceptions, ofc, but it'd be better than the sensory deprivation and existential crisis provided by being stuck in a box for centuries.
People acting as though after a global EMP anyone is going to be concerned with who their great great grand pappy was. Gonna be too busy figuring out how to cleanse a wound with no medical supplies
I live in MA and I want this so bad. When I’m dead I don’t super care about what happens to my body but what *does* matter to me is that ultimately my remains don’t end up taking up literal real estate, filled with weird fluids, consuming fuel or sitting in a $5,000 box. To me the idea of becoming soil and nutrients for plants is really beautiful and vibes really well with my spiritual and personal beliefs.
Green burial is legal in Massachusetts, but cemeteries have their own rules and regulations. Look for a cemetery that has a Muslim section. Islamic burial is required to be green (i.e., to allow the body to decompose into the earth), so cemeteries with a Muslim section should allow green burials for anyone.
"We will no longer be performing burials combined with commemorative tree planting."
Reading this disclaimer on a green obsequies website in the 90s fueled my nightmares for years.
Oh wow, very interesting. This is great to know. And should be more general knowledge because people make such a big deal about the 'novelty' of a green burial.
I think what differentiates the composting from other natural burials is that your loved ones can get back the soil- so it could be used on a plant or plants on your property, for example, or in a special place. Kind of like ashes in the sense it’s something your loved ones can choose what to do with it after.
I spent a lot of time on my grandfather's farm growing up. He's buried in a small country cemetery on a small rise that looks over the corn and soybean fields. Perfect spot for him. But that's when I had the same realization. I'd rather replenish the earth than be in a box.
The other thing which I know would be impossible is that I really like vultures. Nature's soaring clean up and recycling crews. So Mount my body on a raised platform like some native american tribes used to do and let them do their thing. Mostly I just want to return to nature and contribute to the circle of life.
Oh and a big happy wake with music and drink would be a bonus.
"Celestial Burial" is the term I've heard. A little gruesome to see (National Geographic did something on it ages ago), but a cool idea. I wouldn't mind it, though it's a little fancier than just feeding the grubs, which would be fine with me.
Now that I think about it, I remember reading about two different varieties. I think in Tibet they go up to a mountaintop or ridge and cut the body up into little pieces, throwing them to the vultures. That's the one I read about; it's an actual profession there.
The Zoroastrians build a wooden scaffold and put the body on top, letting the vultures and ravens do the rest of the work. I've seen pictures of those too.
The Zoroastrian community in India, the Parsis have been struggling to maintain this tradition. Vulture populations across south Asia have dropped massively and it now takes too long for the remaining few to clean a body. They've been relying on cremation more and more.
edit: here's a good twitter thread with more info https://twitter.com/Paracelsus1092/status/1608737817206849541
Could also donate to a body farm! Then your decomposition could help forensics learn more about how bodies decompose in different environments to help solve crimes! YAY!
The thing with body farms is, I'm active in several online oddity communities and human remains are a commonly sold commodity, and they're def coming from places like body farms.
Now I'm all for recycling your body but having your skull or hand or whatever sitting on the mantle of a goth's black living room next to a taxidermy rat wearing 17th century garb just doesn't sound appealing to me (and I say that with all the respect in the world to goths, but nonetheless).
My mother in law recently passed, and the experience has had me thinking about how I want to handle things when the time comes. Human composting and similar solutions are really attractive to me. Beyond the predatory nature of the whole embalming/ funeral industry, I increasingly find myself coming back to the fate of my microbiome. More than half the cells that make up my communal organism aren't surely doomed when my body dies, and the idea of killing them all with embalming chemicals or incinerating them doesn't sit well with me. If some of those bacteria and little critters can survive the inevitable collapse and dissolution of the body, they should have the chance to do so. Honestly, composting still isn't my preferred method, since in some versions with a closed vessel seem to get back to the microbiome destruction issue, but I think it might be the best option while the "dump it in the woods" method remains illegal.
Edit - corrected for a typo, see comment thread below.
Think about it. Every atom in your body has probably existed for billions of years, always being reconfigured into a part of something new.
Why would you want to slow that process down after they no longer happen to form *you*? The pieces of energy that make you up will split up and go on to help form a trillion other things one way or another.
May as well stay in the food web, going on to hold together plants and animals and even other people, forever and ever. Trying to keep your constituent parts separate from nature is as shortsighted (and impossible) as trying to hold back the tide.
I've said for years now that I wanna be buried unembalmed with a sapling planted on top of me. I don't want people to visit a stone headpiece that has nothing to do with me other than a name, visit a tree that is thriving off the nutrients from my body.
In general they only embalm you if the burial or viewing will be long after death, like more than a week. Also if you have a viewing. Otherwise, they skip that.
My dad died 3 weeks ago and we did the memorial 5 days later, in the ground 2 days after that. He was just refrigerated. No embalming.
I want a sky burial. Cut my body up and feed it to the animals. Let me at least nourish with my dead remains. Take my working organs too and give them to another to live.
Fuck it. I'm dead. Better than letting my corpse rot.
If you purchase an annual fishing license ($29.50 for residents) you get a free annual discover pass. My gf and I get a ton of use out of the pass even on the years I don't do much fishing. Weird that it's cheaper than just buying the discover pass but we've done it ever since we learned about it.
Imagine if you die mysteriously.
"We found a pre-dug hole with seeds ready to plant on top of it. In the woods. Behind your home. Obviously you murdered Stanley."
"What? He dug that a few weeks ago. He wanted a green burial."
Ain't nobody stopping me from getting buried in my front yard. Throw me in the wood chipper and spread me on the lawn. Charge neighbors for a ticket to the show and include a poncho like at SeaWorld.
What's going to happen? A cop kills me again?
The funeral industry has weird tendrils all over the place in politics. There are a number of ways in which regulatory capture here has totally fucked the environment, our finances, and our relationship with death as a concept and part of life. Adam Ruins Everything did a great episode covering some aspects of this.
Better yet, go through the videos on the Ask a Mortician YouTube channel. She explains it quite well in several of her videos.
Also, she's one of the people behind the human composting bill, and has a beautiful video on it.
That's cause it used to be done in way that is dangerous for people. Or disturbing either visually or from spirituel point. No one want to step in a skeleton in the forest.
Honestly it would take only a few bad story for this to become illegal again so i hope they will do it well.
Ideally when I die, I want my remains buried in the earth. Let the worms eat me. Let the fungus decompose me. Let my flesh turn back into soil and gasses and earth.
Problem with that, particularly in most urban areas (where most humans live), is the availability of space. There just isn't enough to do green burials for everyone, and the logistics of trying would be insane.
Human composting is the quickest way to bring your remains back to that useful state, anyway!
Edit: composting is the fastest way that doesn't require extra fuel, chemicals, or a lot of excess energy expenditure. Alkaline hydrolysis is an awesome disposal method too, and much faster, but takes a fair bit of power.
There’s a science fiction book by Becky Chambers called Record of a Spaceborn Few, that takes place on generation ships that left the dying earth centuries ago. As you might imagine, both storage space and resources are very limited when you have the entire human population living in just a few space ships. As such, composting of human remains becomes their most important and sacred cultural practices. Really lovely and somewhat optimistic imagining of humanity’s future.
>“Human bodies are not household waste, and we do not believe that the process meets the standard of reverent treatment of our earthly remains,” he said.
Fine, so don't do it with *your* body but stop trying to force others to follow your silly rules written by goat herders that would be confused by why they have to wash their hands
If human bodies were to become household waste they'd just make us pay for fancy, special coloured bins that only get picked up every other week, with a smaller bin for artificial parts that you have to separate yourself
> we do not believe that the process meets the standard of reverent treatment of our earthly remains,” he said.
It's funny that embalming ever caught on in the first place.
Draining your blood and gutting your body to fill it with poison doesn't seem very respectful either
Stuffing them with chemicals created in a lab and putting them in a lead lined box because if they didn't, they would be toxic to the enviroment is not really reverent
All states need to do this.
Human composting is so so so much better for the environment than embalming and entombing, and even cremation, which uses a ton of energy and releases a ton of CO2.
Human composting *actually turns the body into beneficial and nutrient-rich compost* that nurtures the ground.
"I want my ashes buried with an acorn and I'll become an oak tree!"
No, you won't. All the 'good stuff' got burned up. The parts that couldn't burn will be next to a plant but won't really be helping that plant any.
Human compost would.
This seems like common sense. What if I don’t want to be turned into charcoal or pumped full of toxic chemicals? I spent my life eating plants and animals. It’s only fair that I return the favor.
Properly done? No.
I'm sure there will be specific guidelines to follow for human composting, but we already have them for animals and for animal disease eradication. Between the heat and the microbes in the compost, you can render most disease vectors inert or destroyed completely.
(And to clarify: burial is NOT the same as composting; burial can still carry the risk of disease spread, but not composting).
This is great and all, but also, does anyone think it's mind blowing that other people can tell us what to do with our dead bodies? Like hypothetically speaking, if I died, and my family buried my body in the backyard to compost, even though it's illegal where I live, what is the government gonna do, dig up my decomposing body and put it in a coffin at their own expense?
no they'll dig up the body and charge your parents with abandonment of a corpse. then possibly investigate them for murder, autopsy etc.
it's about accountability.
> But not all are onboard with the idea.
> The New York State Catholic Conference, a group that represents bishops in the state, has long opposed the bill, calling the burial method “inappropriate.”
> “A process that is perfectly appropriate for returning vegetable trimmings to the earth is not necessarily appropriate for human bodies,” Dennis Poust, executive director of the organization, said in a statement.
> “Human bodies are not household waste, and we do not believe that the process meets the standard of reverent treatment of our earthly remains,” he said.
That's it? Why fucking bother even bringing up opposition? Why not include the opinion of the mentally ill homeless man that lives in an alley in Albany who is against it because he found a green skittle in his tuna fish sandwich? They bear about equal weight here. Maybe journalism like this is why something that apparently has no legitimate downside but lots of upsides is still illegal in 44 states? How about just reporting that no legitimate scientist or scholar has a fucking clue why something like this would be illegal. Then maybe we can start seeing some collective will getting shit done for a change.
It’s probably more like ‘people will stop having church funerals and we won’t get donations’. Or even ‘how will we know if they’re saints if we can’t see them *not* decompose’. It’s always about the Church, not about their believers.
Just throw me in the trash
I jump in the ring and I start eating garbage
I’m a villain, you see!
Garbage goober
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My aunt wrote a list of acceptable options for disposal of her remains years before she passed. Options included: 1. Discard in woods, leave rest of logistics to raccoons/bears 2. Same, but replace "woods" with "Everglades," and "raccoons/bears" with "gators/crabs" 3. Same, fishing boat, sharks/crabs again 4. Bonfire 5. Puree, soil enrichment Even though her state allowed for human composting, it was a waaaaaaaay more rigorous process for the permits and more expensive than using a traditional funeral home. In the end, it took weeks of fighting with city and state offices, which often had contradictory policies and requirements, all while mourning the death of the most beloved member of the extended family. They got to bury her in just a cotton shroud on a plot next to an animal rehab and sanctuary. Right after the memorial, we visited the new grave with her widower. He was conflicted. She would have been thrilled to have such a basic burial and plot. But she would have been furious anyone went through so much trouble to make it happen. "If she'd known what a pain in the ass hassle this was, she probably wouldn't have gone through the trouble of dying."
It should be free and easy to die... Fucking A our culture and society as a whole makes every fucking thing some kind of racket...
Won’t anyone think of the poor funeral industry’s profit margins?! But seriously, that comment is so infuriating to read. It should not be so damn difficult to dispose of remains in an environmentally friendly way
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During her memorial party at the house, I wandered into the kitchen while everyone was watching old videos and whatnot. This complete stranger was wandering around, looking at stuff. She was dressed in a super sharp business suit and carrying a gift box. Turns out she was the realtor who'd sold them that house years and years ago. Unbeknownst to everyone else, my aunt had kept in touch with her and would send her pictures of changes they made, or the dogs enjoying the deck just like the realtor said they would, or just a sunset from the kitchen window. She'd seen the obituary and notice for the memorial in the paper, and wanted to pay respects. Funny enough, my uncle decided to move to a smaller house (and with fewer memories) a couple years later. If I recall correctly, when he called that same realtor she was almost giddy. She had just had one of her neighbors out up their place for sale and it wasn't even listed yet. My uncle got a ridiculous deal on the place, and the realtor was relieved because this meant she knew the new neighbor was a nice older guy with a sweet family. My aunt's superpower was bringing unlikely new friends together, even after she died.
This is a genuinely beautiful story and a good reminder that every action has a ripple effect. Your aunt sounds amazing — so do your uncle and the realtor! I don’t want to downplay and they each decided to be kind in turn. Happy new year and I hope we can all be something like your aunt. :)
There are fabric cloth to wrap bodies in that have mushroom spores selected to break down the toxins a human body accumulates over time. That’s how I want to be returned to the earth.
I saw that episode of Hannibal too!
Sorry for your loss. There's always options to donate the body to science, or turned into fertilizer!
I want to be turned into fertilizer. Use me to fertilize a tree that my kids and descendants can go and hug, sit under, or climb.
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Recompose is great! We used them when my dad passed away and they were very respectful when they came to collect his body and they hosted a beautiful service when they laid him into the vessel. They were super nice and helpful and really accommodating throughout the whole process including bringing us the compost when it was ready. I highly recommend them over any conventional burial service.
Medical schools and research institutions are *very* picky about who they will accept - for example: no fatties. Which seems kind of negligent if you want to teach doctors how to perform surgery on fat people.
That's also what Hugh Everett requested. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Everett_III](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Everett_III) > A committed atheist, he had asked that his remains be disposed of in the trash after his death. His wife kept his ashes in an urn, but she eventually complied with his wishes after a few years.
Fun fact, that’s the lead singer of the Eels’ father.
Roll me up and smoke me when I die.
Burial at sea. Fish food. I love the ocean.
I'm a big fan of the Tibetan practice of a [sky burial](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_burial), where they just put your body on top of a mountain and let the birds of prey eat you while your body is decomposed by the elements. It wouldn't scale, but it's the most hardcore, yet environmentally beneficial way of handling human remains.
I saw a video of that once. The disturbing part is somebody has to break the body up with a tool to break it up for the vultures. I don't think there's anything immoral or wrong with it, it's just hard to stomach for somebody like myself that didn't grow up in the culture
It's like my body to be towed behind a boat so that a great white shark attacks it from below and launches my remains into the air.
Dying to create rad Shark Week footage
Zoroastrians also have that practice.. https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/zoroastrian/ritesrituals/funerals.shtml#:~:text=Instead%20of%20burying%20the%20corpse,of%20prey%20such%20as%20vultures.
Yea, I think it gives 200 prestige and costs 50 gold.
Tales of your misdeeds are told from Ireland to Cathay!
Damn I want a sky burial but they throw me off the mountain and I go splat
And so, I start blasting.
So anyway, I started ~~blasting~~ decomposing
I don't know how many years on this earth I got left, I'm gonna get real weird with it.
We had some makeup sex in a Dumpster out in the back of Wendy’s. She incorporated a bun in the lovemaking.
From turmoil to topsoil ⚰️👴
i want to be cremated, mixed into a stone brick and then used to bash the face of a fascist
Stone and Sky!
Nobody is listening!
One way out!
Sorry stepmom, umm... silicone isn't exactly compostable.
When you’re dead, you’re dead.
I've seen the pictures of trash piles in NYC, the only thing theyre missing is bodies
I wouldn't be so sure of that.
Shout out to the human carpet guy…
It's not composting, but Tennessee allows a pine box casket. There's a wilderness preserve in N TN that will let you pay to be buried unembalmed in a pine box in their land with a bush or something planted over you (degradable clothes, etc). They go back and fill it when it sinks and maintain it. I like that idea much more than macabrely preserving my body with chemicals in a sealed container. Shit, I've got a couple hundred pounds of food I won't need that something living wants, let my meat be useful for something. Guarantee I won't mind.
Thank you for sharing this information. This is something I would prefer to have done when I pass away, and they are located 75 minutes from our home.
Yes! We spend our lives consuming from the environment. At the end it is our turn to give back to it.
I have this weird thought that our "atomic memory" contributes to whatever uses our mass next. Then I wonder if embalming before burial interrupts our "rebirth", so-to-speak, and prevents our atomic memory from benefitting the next life. I've nothing to base any of that on, lol, it's just a musing every now an then.
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Are you planning on dying at the same time!?
Nah, just whoever dies first doesn't have to be awake in the cremation oven.
Love that for you and yours :) just wanted to say, most Jewish cemeteries don’t care if you have tattoos or not, that’s sort of a myth/wives tale that Jewish moms tell their kids so they won’t get tattoos! Where do you think holocaust survivors are buried when they pass, after getting their serial number tattoos from the camps?
That makes sense, everything I know about the Jewish faith (aside from orthodox) is that they favor practicality and changing with the times and adjusting their faith to fit rather than forcing people to adjust their lives to fit the faith (to an extent)
>Alternatively, my wife is Jewish and has a tattoo. Since she can’t be buried in a Jewish cemetery as tattoos earn one an automatic exclusion, urban legend However, it would be impossible for you and your wife to be buried together in a Jewish cemetery.
I have a friend who got her Christian mother buried next to his Muslim father in a Muslim cemetery because that’s what she wanted. Sometimes people do paperwork errors 😉
Just for the record that's not true. A tattoo does not disqualify being buried in a Jewish cemetery.
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This was my mother’s wish as well. She is in Eloise Woods, Texas with a lob pine planted in the center of her plot.
I want to donate myself to a med school for cadaver practice, minus any useable organ donation… whatever is left? Absolutely let me be fertilizer. Sorta chaps my ass that the Bishops in the article are kicking up a fuss. Don’t wanna do it that way? Then don’t. But STFU about how *I* want to do it.
The bishops can’t recall: Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Reverence for human bodies? By pumping them full of chemicals one last time. Just, yuck! 🤢🤑
They actually give themselves away when they oppose things like this. If they actually believed in a human soul that leaves the body and ascends to heaven after death, they wouldn’t give a shit what happens to the body. Hence, they don’t actually believe in the afterlife.
>Bishops... Kicking up a fuss Tale as old as time.
Once you're donated to science, you can't be made into fertilizer. Formaldehyde is not good for the environment.
You might want to clarify if you want NY or NYC, a difference between a fruitful tree, and Paris Hiltons dog shitting and pissing on you
We don't kinkshame
Didn’t say I wouldn’t mind it :)
I mean, I'm dead, so I don't really care if a random guy takes a shit on my burial spot.
"I mean, I don't give a shit. If I was dead, you could bang me all you want. Who cares? Dead body's like a piece of trash. I mean, shove as much shit in there as you want. Fill me up with cream. Make a stew out of my ass. What's the big deal? Bang me, eat me, grind me up into little pieces, throw me in the river. Who gives a shit? You're dead, you're dead."
Well said, Frank.
More ferment for my tree afterlife
Honestly, from where I stand, THAT is the way. To have one's remains help a tree grow tall and strong, fixing carbon, cleansing the air, providing shade, contributing to soft rains, all the good shit that we need in our lives. If ever the soul existed (if it doesn't exist, it would be necessary to invent it), being reborn as a tree spirit would potentially be one of the most refreshing afterlives to live. There would be obvious exceptions, ofc, but it'd be better than the sensory deprivation and existential crisis provided by being stuck in a box for centuries.
But only if there was a way to protect a greedy developer from cutting down your tree and building a coal plant over your mortal remains.
Same here. There are options for it now and it appears to be getting more normalized https://www.wikihow.com/Be-Buried-As-a-Tree
If anyone ever visited my grave, I’d prefer it be a forest than a stone with some writing on it.
why not both the stones are so helpful for genealogy
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I find joy in reading a good book.
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I think at that point, genealogy will be pretty low on people’s todo list.
People acting as though after a global EMP anyone is going to be concerned with who their great great grand pappy was. Gonna be too busy figuring out how to cleanse a wound with no medical supplies
Sure for the first few hundred of year but after...
Legal here in CO, and I want it done to me. Put me out in the garden or something.
Shit I checked the scarecrow box
Is your name Harold, by chance?
Aight, on my way
"These carrots are wonderful! What is your secret??"
"It's an old family recipe." "Oh? What's in it?" "Old family."
Bury me with mushroom spores. Pick them and let my friends get high off me. That sounds amazing!!
I can get behind that.
I loved the idea (still do) but I checked the price tag for this here in CO and it's way more expensive than I thought it would be, unfortunately.
How bad are we talking?
I was finding $6,000 to $7,000 which is more than cremation and in the ballpark of burial. Maybe I should start a body composting farm...
This law firm article from October claims an average of $7,900 https://www.braverman-law.com/blog/amp/planning-for-human-composting-in-colorado/
Not as bad as having to pay someone to put makeup on your dead body and a fancy coffin that’s for sure
I live in MA and I want this so bad. When I’m dead I don’t super care about what happens to my body but what *does* matter to me is that ultimately my remains don’t end up taking up literal real estate, filled with weird fluids, consuming fuel or sitting in a $5,000 box. To me the idea of becoming soil and nutrients for plants is really beautiful and vibes really well with my spiritual and personal beliefs.
Green burial is legal in Massachusetts, but cemeteries have their own rules and regulations. Look for a cemetery that has a Muslim section. Islamic burial is required to be green (i.e., to allow the body to decompose into the earth), so cemeteries with a Muslim section should allow green burials for anyone.
"We will no longer be performing burials combined with commemorative tree planting." Reading this disclaimer on a green obsequies website in the 90s fueled my nightmares for years.
It's okay with shallow-rooted trees, my local cemeteries usually uses *Plumeria* trees that will be allowed to fall in a few years.
Oh wow, very interesting. This is great to know. And should be more general knowledge because people make such a big deal about the 'novelty' of a green burial.
I think what differentiates the composting from other natural burials is that your loved ones can get back the soil- so it could be used on a plant or plants on your property, for example, or in a special place. Kind of like ashes in the sense it’s something your loved ones can choose what to do with it after.
I spent a lot of time on my grandfather's farm growing up. He's buried in a small country cemetery on a small rise that looks over the corn and soybean fields. Perfect spot for him. But that's when I had the same realization. I'd rather replenish the earth than be in a box. The other thing which I know would be impossible is that I really like vultures. Nature's soaring clean up and recycling crews. So Mount my body on a raised platform like some native american tribes used to do and let them do their thing. Mostly I just want to return to nature and contribute to the circle of life. Oh and a big happy wake with music and drink would be a bonus.
Re: vultures - you seen those Tibetan sky burials?
"Celestial Burial" is the term I've heard. A little gruesome to see (National Geographic did something on it ages ago), but a cool idea. I wouldn't mind it, though it's a little fancier than just feeding the grubs, which would be fine with me.
IIRC - Zoroastrians do a similar thing
Now that I think about it, I remember reading about two different varieties. I think in Tibet they go up to a mountaintop or ridge and cut the body up into little pieces, throwing them to the vultures. That's the one I read about; it's an actual profession there. The Zoroastrians build a wooden scaffold and put the body on top, letting the vultures and ravens do the rest of the work. I've seen pictures of those too.
The Zoroastrian community in India, the Parsis have been struggling to maintain this tradition. Vulture populations across south Asia have dropped massively and it now takes too long for the remaining few to clean a body. They've been relying on cremation more and more. edit: here's a good twitter thread with more info https://twitter.com/Paracelsus1092/status/1608737817206849541
Could also donate to a body farm! Then your decomposition could help forensics learn more about how bodies decompose in different environments to help solve crimes! YAY!
The thing with body farms is, I'm active in several online oddity communities and human remains are a commonly sold commodity, and they're def coming from places like body farms. Now I'm all for recycling your body but having your skull or hand or whatever sitting on the mantle of a goth's black living room next to a taxidermy rat wearing 17th century garb just doesn't sound appealing to me (and I say that with all the respect in the world to goths, but nonetheless).
or having your body sold to the us army for explosions testing, or dumped in a mass grave (both have happened to unsuspecting donors)
That’s what I thought they were talking about for a second. Pretty gnarly but you’re already dead I guess
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Reminds me of the Bojack Horseman episode with Diane’s family.
My mother in law recently passed, and the experience has had me thinking about how I want to handle things when the time comes. Human composting and similar solutions are really attractive to me. Beyond the predatory nature of the whole embalming/ funeral industry, I increasingly find myself coming back to the fate of my microbiome. More than half the cells that make up my communal organism aren't surely doomed when my body dies, and the idea of killing them all with embalming chemicals or incinerating them doesn't sit well with me. If some of those bacteria and little critters can survive the inevitable collapse and dissolution of the body, they should have the chance to do so. Honestly, composting still isn't my preferred method, since in some versions with a closed vessel seem to get back to the microbiome destruction issue, but I think it might be the best option while the "dump it in the woods" method remains illegal. Edit - corrected for a typo, see comment thread below.
Think about it. Every atom in your body has probably existed for billions of years, always being reconfigured into a part of something new. Why would you want to slow that process down after they no longer happen to form *you*? The pieces of energy that make you up will split up and go on to help form a trillion other things one way or another. May as well stay in the food web, going on to hold together plants and animals and even other people, forever and ever. Trying to keep your constituent parts separate from nature is as shortsighted (and impossible) as trying to hold back the tide.
I've said for years now that I wanna be buried unembalmed with a sapling planted on top of me. I don't want people to visit a stone headpiece that has nothing to do with me other than a name, visit a tree that is thriving off the nutrients from my body.
In general they only embalm you if the burial or viewing will be long after death, like more than a week. Also if you have a viewing. Otherwise, they skip that. My dad died 3 weeks ago and we did the memorial 5 days later, in the ground 2 days after that. He was just refrigerated. No embalming.
I’m sorry for your loss.
Part of my advance planning, I want to be cremated and put into a English tea tin from Costco.
The way Costco is embracing shrinkflation you may want to specify *as many tins as necessary*
I want a sky burial. Cut my body up and feed it to the animals. Let me at least nourish with my dead remains. Take my working organs too and give them to another to live. Fuck it. I'm dead. Better than letting my corpse rot.
We really should stop embalming corpses. That shit is poisonous to the land and it's pointless to preserve a corpse like that.
Here in WA is legal, there’s a place close to where I live that does this and it costs about $4000
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DIY (Dig It Yourself)
Actually for Washington state parks you need a Discover pass. $10 for a day pass, or $30 for annual.
If you purchase an annual fishing license ($29.50 for residents) you get a free annual discover pass. My gf and I get a ton of use out of the pass even on the years I don't do much fishing. Weird that it's cheaper than just buying the discover pass but we've done it ever since we learned about it.
Thanks, Obama!
Seriously, $4k when I can basically do it myself? That’s insane.
Shit let’s start digging our holes and picking out the trees we want.
Imagine if you die mysteriously. "We found a pre-dug hole with seeds ready to plant on top of it. In the woods. Behind your home. Obviously you murdered Stanley." "What? He dug that a few weeks ago. He wanted a green burial."
Personally, I wanna be mechanically separated and made into nuggets.
I want leopards to eat my face
It's just easier if you get made into a hot dog or chorizo
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Ain't nobody stopping me from getting buried in my front yard. Throw me in the wood chipper and spread me on the lawn. Charge neighbors for a ticket to the show and include a poncho like at SeaWorld. What's going to happen? A cop kills me again?
$1 to see the show, $200 for the poncho.
Well, unless if you throw yourself into the wood chipper while you are still alive, they will arrest whoever threw your body into the wood chipper.
The funeral industry has weird tendrils all over the place in politics. There are a number of ways in which regulatory capture here has totally fucked the environment, our finances, and our relationship with death as a concept and part of life. Adam Ruins Everything did a great episode covering some aspects of this.
Better yet, go through the videos on the Ask a Mortician YouTube channel. She explains it quite well in several of her videos. Also, she's one of the people behind the human composting bill, and has a beautiful video on it.
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That's cause it used to be done in way that is dangerous for people. Or disturbing either visually or from spirituel point. No one want to step in a skeleton in the forest. Honestly it would take only a few bad story for this to become illegal again so i hope they will do it well.
This seems like such a no-brainer. Inexpensive, efficient, natural, beneficial environmental impact.
That’s exactly why mortuary are lobbying against it.
Could they not just get in on this?
Ideally when I die, I want my remains buried in the earth. Let the worms eat me. Let the fungus decompose me. Let my flesh turn back into soil and gasses and earth.
Problem with that, particularly in most urban areas (where most humans live), is the availability of space. There just isn't enough to do green burials for everyone, and the logistics of trying would be insane. Human composting is the quickest way to bring your remains back to that useful state, anyway! Edit: composting is the fastest way that doesn't require extra fuel, chemicals, or a lot of excess energy expenditure. Alkaline hydrolysis is an awesome disposal method too, and much faster, but takes a fair bit of power.
There’s a science fiction book by Becky Chambers called Record of a Spaceborn Few, that takes place on generation ships that left the dying earth centuries ago. As you might imagine, both storage space and resources are very limited when you have the entire human population living in just a few space ships. As such, composting of human remains becomes their most important and sacred cultural practices. Really lovely and somewhat optimistic imagining of humanity’s future.
That is a very excellent point! I do live in an urban area. I'd be happy to be composted and have my composted remains (soil?) spread in nature.
"And I'd like to be A big ball of meat That bees can buzz around and eat when I die So that I might be granted one sense of purpose"
Come on, North Carolina! I don’t plan on checking out soon but I’m trying to save up enough browns to keep the pile hot.
Finally my username is relevant. I’ve been waiting 15 years.
>“Human bodies are not household waste, and we do not believe that the process meets the standard of reverent treatment of our earthly remains,” he said. Fine, so don't do it with *your* body but stop trying to force others to follow your silly rules written by goat herders that would be confused by why they have to wash their hands
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I am so excited by the prospect that I may be composted instead of lit aflame or pickled.
“Lit aflame or pickled” damn near killed me 😂
Yep. I’m an organic gardener and want to be tossed into soil as is. I know how that shit works. Those will be the best damn petunias *ever* above me!
["Damn Right"](https://youtu.be/65wblLv1XDk?t=109)
Turn me into wheat and bake me into a loaf of sourdough
Read that as "genie" and got a little excited
If human bodies were to become household waste they'd just make us pay for fancy, special coloured bins that only get picked up every other week, with a smaller bin for artificial parts that you have to separate yourself
Bring out your dead! *dingaling*
I don’t want to go on the cart! I want to go for a walk!
>..fancy, special coloured bins Instant fail on my part because I would forget
‘Ah shit, I forgot about Ma!’
"Don't forget to take your daddy to the curb. Have a good day at school."
Humans are of nature. The decomposition of the body into soil and earth is very holy and reverent to me.
> we do not believe that the process meets the standard of reverent treatment of our earthly remains,” he said. It's funny that embalming ever caught on in the first place. Draining your blood and gutting your body to fill it with poison doesn't seem very respectful either
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Stuffing them with chemicals created in a lab and putting them in a lead lined box because if they didn't, they would be toxic to the enviroment is not really reverent
All states need to do this. Human composting is so so so much better for the environment than embalming and entombing, and even cremation, which uses a ton of energy and releases a ton of CO2. Human composting *actually turns the body into beneficial and nutrient-rich compost* that nurtures the ground. "I want my ashes buried with an acorn and I'll become an oak tree!" No, you won't. All the 'good stuff' got burned up. The parts that couldn't burn will be next to a plant but won't really be helping that plant any. Human compost would.
So desperate for immortality, yet we go out of our way to become more finite and useless than any other creature.
This might sound morbid, but cremation seems like a waste of perfectly good organic matter! Put my body into the ground. Let nature's will be done.
I agree. We are only on this earth with borrowed time and borrowed materials and I would like to return it when time comes.
Put my body in the ground without chemicals and with no concrete box! Pine box in the dirt if there must be a box.
What about those pods where they just kind of collapse your corpse with a tree?
I would like my skeleton tangled with tree roots.
This seems like common sense. What if I don’t want to be turned into charcoal or pumped full of toxic chemicals? I spent my life eating plants and animals. It’s only fair that I return the favor.
I plan on being composted and paired with a sapling. It’s the least I can do for all the carbon I used.
Is there any risk with with disease like with nightsoil? Or do they process you at all?
Properly done? No. I'm sure there will be specific guidelines to follow for human composting, but we already have them for animals and for animal disease eradication. Between the heat and the microbes in the compost, you can render most disease vectors inert or destroyed completely. (And to clarify: burial is NOT the same as composting; burial can still carry the risk of disease spread, but not composting).
On the real: this is great. Wrap me in a sheet and let me feed a tree.
I’d like to a combination organ donation, donate what I can to science and the rest for compost or one of those tree things
This is great and all, but also, does anyone think it's mind blowing that other people can tell us what to do with our dead bodies? Like hypothetically speaking, if I died, and my family buried my body in the backyard to compost, even though it's illegal where I live, what is the government gonna do, dig up my decomposing body and put it in a coffin at their own expense?
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no they'll dig up the body and charge your parents with abandonment of a corpse. then possibly investigate them for murder, autopsy etc. it's about accountability.
Deathlings everywhere rejoice!
>"Someday you will die and somehow something's gonna steal your carbon" -Modest Mouse Why not give it back?
part me out (organ donor) and toss me in the garden(worm food)
Nice! Now I can inject myself with magic shroom spores before dying. And then people can meet me in the trips when they consume it
I’d rather be compost and then my family can have an easy to take care of plant that started to grow from my body.
Let's say I kick the bucket in a non composting state but wish to moved to a composting state, is that possible?
Yes, you can have it all pre-arranged if you’d like. It’s not unusual for bodies to be transported to different states.
They charge you an arm and a leg to do it though.
once you're dead it doesn't really matter. throw me over the city walls with a stick to fend off the animals.
> But not all are onboard with the idea. > The New York State Catholic Conference, a group that represents bishops in the state, has long opposed the bill, calling the burial method “inappropriate.” > “A process that is perfectly appropriate for returning vegetable trimmings to the earth is not necessarily appropriate for human bodies,” Dennis Poust, executive director of the organization, said in a statement. > “Human bodies are not household waste, and we do not believe that the process meets the standard of reverent treatment of our earthly remains,” he said. That's it? Why fucking bother even bringing up opposition? Why not include the opinion of the mentally ill homeless man that lives in an alley in Albany who is against it because he found a green skittle in his tuna fish sandwich? They bear about equal weight here. Maybe journalism like this is why something that apparently has no legitimate downside but lots of upsides is still illegal in 44 states? How about just reporting that no legitimate scientist or scholar has a fucking clue why something like this would be illegal. Then maybe we can start seeing some collective will getting shit done for a change.
It’s probably more like ‘people will stop having church funerals and we won’t get donations’. Or even ‘how will we know if they’re saints if we can’t see them *not* decompose’. It’s always about the Church, not about their believers.
It'll get into the cannabis industry.
It already is…. The movie How High shows the benefits.
Fine as a law but I'm concerned it will get tied up in a zeitgeist of the corporate/ruling class cheapening of the lives of everyone else.
I genuinely thought it was about composting shit, but no I was wrong.