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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday December 10 2019, @10:46AM   Printer-friendly
from the real-dirt-nap dept.

In 2021, a Seattle Washington funeral company is set to open its doors and begin accepting customers in a first of a kind human composting site.

US 'deathcare' company Recompose will be able to turn the deceased into a cubic yard of soil over a period of as little as 30 days, using one-eighth of the energy of cremation and saving as much as a metric ton of carbon dioxide from being produced compared to other forms of burial.

The company will be able to service up to 75 individuals at once.

the process sees bodies placed in reusable vessels covered in woodchips, alfalfa and hay, and sealed away in hexagonal tubes.

There the corpse's temperature is regulated while its surroundings are aerated, allowing naturally occurring bacteria to break down the body over the course of four to seven weeks.

The deceased is then returned to their loved ones as compost, limiting the carbon footprint from cremations and traditional burials while cutting out the embalming fluid chemicals which can leach into the soil and can pollute groundwater.

If desired, the dearly departed dirt can also be donated to

a land soil project to provide a forest on the state's Bell Mountain with additional nutrients, with one person creating 2,000 to 3,000 pounds of soil.

Previous Coverage Here, Here, and Here


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 10 2019, @01:40PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 10 2019, @01:40PM (#930543)

    well, this is a first step.
    regular science (and religion) cannot really discern between coffin burial, oven burial or cover-with-dirt burial. dead is dead, right? doesn't matter what happens next.
    ofc oven burial is the cheapest, fastest/easiest and has the most "efficient" output. burning shit to a crisp is also how the living mostly get rid of all matter of unwanted junk :)
    well, ignoring the "implications" of loved ones BBQ their deceased, i feel the next step should be to establish a official )government/federal) composting agency.
    it would be tasked with giving out permits to "compost" dead people.
    for example, you got a really loved one but dead and a garden. you would call this agent and show him the death certificate and the garden.
    the agent would take some soil probe and then determine if the garden space is suitable for composting. if ok-ed you can return the body to gaia in your own back yard.
    i much would prefer this then particulirizing dead bodies into an aerosol and spraying them far and wide out the smoke stack only to redeposit them in (soon to be dead?) lungs of the living.
    i kid you not, where i live, if it smells like BBQ at three A.M. a rather fat person was put thru the stack. the skinny ones smell less ... tasty.
    -
    shiiit! it's my garden (now) and my relative.

  • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Tuesday December 10 2019, @02:07PM

    by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Tuesday December 10 2019, @02:07PM (#930552) Journal
    This is not a first step. Before embalming, everyone who was buried was turned into dirt. And a lot cheaper . And serial killers still do it.
    --
    SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.