The World’s First Human Composting Facility Will Open in 2021
When a human being’s time is up, in Western countries we generally have two main options for our mortal remains – burial or cremation. Now, a world-first facility has been set up to offer a unique alternative ritual to traditional choices: compost.
Recompose, which is scheduled to begin operations in Seattle, Washington in 2021, bills itself as the world’s first human composting facility, offering to gently convert human remains into soil, in a process it calls “recomposition” or “natural organic reduction”.
The company, a public benefit corporation led by founder Katrina Spade, has been in the works for years, but became a legally viable service this year when Washington passed a historic bill to become the first US state to allow human composting.
The law goes into effect in May 2020, enabling what Spade calls a “death-care revolution”, in which bodies of the deceased will transform into soil in the company’s reusable, hexagonal ‘Recomposition Vessels’.
“Bodies are covered with wood chips and aerated, providing the perfect environment for naturally occurring microbes and beneficial bacteria,” Recompose’s web site explains.
“Over the span of about 30 days, the body is fully transformed, creating soil which can then be used to grow new life.” SOURCE:https://www.sciencealert.com/the-world-s-first-human-composting-facility-will-turn-you-into-soil-in-2021?fbclid=IwAR2aZlLPfDViEoMIBaNbcZlnVgpC7UllcD7TNwatL-ZiJZjCI4Hor7lM2yE
This does bring up a few thoughts;
* Haven’t humans haven’t been composting on their own for who knows how many millions of years…
* What they do with the big bones? Do they run the contents of the “bins” through a shredder before handing them over to the family for their roses? Even the best aeration and compost management doesn’t break down the big bones… skulls, pelvis, leg bones… they can be found intact even years later. Cadaver dogs have been able to detect and show their handlers the odor from someone who was buried many decades earlier… several feet up a tree that was planted over the grave at the time of burial.
* With all of the chemicals and crap we consume during our lives, our bodies are quite toxic.
* I wonder how they deal with things like joint replacements, fillings, etc. My guess is that this “green” process involves at least one noisy, smelly, fossil fuel guzzling machine to sift and shred the “compost” afterwards.
* Then you get into the issues of regulations, laws and permits. I’m guessing if they sift out medical prosthetics, it all would have to be handled and disposed of as medical waste. People are just not organic beings these days.
This isn’t as simple and inexpensive a process as they might imply. Not the same as taking granny out to that pretty spot in the woods and then unloading a couple loads of manure on top. Just take the soil home, put it in your vegetable garden, and grow green beans in grandma. Just like Soylent Green!
Nihilism grows barbarism.