Pushing up daisies, ~ literally!
What’s the deal with human composting?
Q: What do coffee grounds and humans have in common?
A: They’re both great for composting.
To introduce the topic of human composting, allow me to discuss a scene from an older, but still popular, 1972 movie, Jeremiah Johnson, starring Robert Redford. Jeremiah was a mountain man, and judging from his military uniform, he had served in the Mexican War, so the time period was most likely the late 1840s.
The scene in question begins with a cavalry unit showing up at a cabin where Jeremiah is living with a Native American woman and a mute boy who had witnessed the slaughter of his family. The cavalry officers implore Jeremiah to lead them through a rugged mountain pass to save the lives of a group of settlers stranded in deep snow in a remote valley.
Against his better judgment, he relents and leaves behind his circumstantial family to help the settlers. Jeremiah insists that the soldiers stay silent out of respect for a Crow burial ground they must go through to reach the pass.
The soldiers are unaware of the danger they have imposed on Jeremiah, but he knows that the Crows don’t take kindly to those who disrespect their sacred burial grounds. Johnson is visibly spooked as they proceed in single file past the body-laden scaffolds that seem to be lifting the dead toward the heavens as an offering.
Johnson’s instincts about the intrusion into sacred ground were shown to be correct when he returned to his cabin to find his Flathead wife and adopted son slaughtered.
Many Native American tribes practiced the same or similar burial techniques. Tree burials were common among the Sioux and Utes, where the Navajo dress and wrap their dead in a blanket and bury them with their possessions far from their living area. If a Navajo dies in their hogan, the entire structure, along with its possessions, is burned to the ground.
Other Native American burial practices include cave burials, tree burials, and simply wrapping the body in a blanket or shroud and placing it in a grave.
Most, if not all, of the native groups provide for a natural burial of the deceased, one in which the body is allowed to return to the earth from whence it came. Think of the Book of Common Prayer phrase, “Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust.”
Unlike conventional funerals using embalming fluids to preserve the body, a natural or green burial does not inhibit decomposition and is currently allowed in five states as an alternative to funerals involving metal caskets and ever-diminishing real estate.
The majority of states still do not permit natural burials for religious reasons and public health concerns. However, that’s likely to change as more and more people opt for burial alternatives like cremation and reject traditional funeral practices for various reasons, including environmental and philosophical.
However, not everyone wants to return as a carrot or a head of cabbage, so traditional funeral services and burials will remain available for a long time.
Ancient cultures generally practiced some form of natural burial, and many continue these methods of sending one off to the afterlife to this very day.
The Tibetan sky burials are an interesting cultural artifact that is still practiced. Based upon Buddhist principles, the dead are placed directly on the ground, and vultures are allowed the task of consuming the dead.
There is likely another reason beyond religion for sky burials. Much of Tibet is above the tree line regarding elevation, so traditional dirt burials would be nearly impossible in solid rock.
That brings us to the modern concept of human composting. According to advocates, a green burial has environmental and psychological benefits.
Except for Tutankhamun and his fellow Egyptian elite, decomposition is our ultimate corporeal destiny. So, we will all be reduced to approximately a cubic yard of viable compost at some point in the future.
At last count, five states permit green burials: California, Colorado, Oregon, Vermont and Washington.
Composting larger mammals is not a new concept; it’s called livestock mortality composting. Many farmers are familiar with this process, which will rid them of a bloated, maggot-infested animal, add more nutrients to their soil, and reduce disease transmission.
The USDA’s written protocol for composting livestock explains it as “ a biological heating process that results in the natural degradation of organic resources (such as animal carcasses) by microorganisms.
Composting mortalities, including sheep, goats, deer, pigs, cattle and horses, has been successfully used throughout the United States for nearly two decades to control animal disease outbreaks and to respond to natural disasters.”
As it happens, livestock composting inspired one design engineer to create a human composting service. Katrina Spade is the founder and CEO of Recompose, a Seattle-based company offering a full-service engineered system to turn a human body into compostable soil in four to six weeks.
In her Ted Talk on human composting, Ms. Spade described her process as bio-mimicry, meaning that the system is modeled on biological processes.
She explains it this way, “Human Composting is bio-mimicry in action; it mimics the same process of a log decaying in the forest floor where insects, bacterial microbes, and fungi turn us back to our essential elements; we become soil.”
When the body arrives at her facility, it is placed on alfalfa, pine chips, and straw layers in a boat-shaped vessel. More of the same material is then respectfully layered on the body.
At this juncture, the deceased’s friends and family can celebrate their life before the vessel enters a chamber called the greenhouse. (photo) Here, the body will reside for four to six weeks while bacterial microbes reduce the body to compost.
The composting process is aerobic, so fans in the chamber draw in air throughout the process. When the body has completed its transformation from a human form to approximately one cubic yard of rich compost, loved ones are invited to claim the material for any suitable use.
Now you can turn old Uncle Barney, a die-hard couch potato, into a real one.
Let’s depart from this slightly uncomfortable, marginally morbid conversation and turn to a bit of decomposition levity. The following is just one of several variations of the story, which, I warn, is a real groaner.
An Austrian man went to a churchyard cemetery in Vienna to visit the grave of his deceased wife. As he wended his way through the gravestones, he came upon the grave of Mozart. Much to his shock, he heard the most beautiful sonata coming from Mozart’s tomb.
The man ran into the church, where he found the priest. He told the cleric about the music he had heard and summoned him to Mozart’s grave. Upon arriving, the priest was flabbergasted to hear music arising from the soil beneath his feet.
Thinking it unthinkable that Mozart was alive and making music, the two men began furiously digging until they hit the lid of Mozart’s coffin. Indeed, music was coming from within.
The priest and the man jumped into the hole with a prybar and carefully lifted the lid. To their amazement, the famous composer was furiously erasing the score from a stack of sheet music.
The priest bent down and asked Mozart, what are you doing, sir? The great composer looked up and said, “Please, do close the lid of my coffin. As you can see, I am busy decomposing.”
I bet you astute readers saw that coming!
Until next time,
Ken Springer
ken1949bongo@gmail.com
Citations are available upon request.
