
Washington state lawmakers approve human corpse composting - prostoalex
https://qz.com/1625446/washington-state-lawmakers-just-approved-human-corpse-composting/
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stephencoyner
This is a huge step in the right direction. Despite anyone's opinions on death
and burial traditions, the reality is that the most common practices are not
eco friendly.

In the U.S. each year we bury 20m ft of hardwood, 1.6m tons of concrete and
4.3m gallons of embalming fluid. [1]

An average cremation takes 28 gallons of fuel. [1]

Also, just my own opinion based on observation, why do cemeteries get all the
best real estate?? Dead people can't enjoy that view.

[1] [https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-your-death-affects-
cl_b_6...](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-your-death-affects-cl_b_6..).

~~~
colordrops
Why are people still embalmed? Is it a throwback from ancient Egyptian
culture? It's absurd.

~~~
williamdclt
For viewings. If the viewing isn't done in the 24h post-death, the body has
decayed noticibly: it's unsightly and smells bad.

(take with a grain of salt, my only source is 10 episodes of Six Feet Under)

~~~
chrisseaton
Surely it doesn’t take more than 24 hours to find someone to identify most
dead bodies? They don’t need to be viewed after they’ve been identified.

~~~
anjc
> They don’t need to be viewed after they’ve been identified.

Says who? Do you have information about the grieving process being easier if
you don't view?

~~~
chrisseaton
> Do you have information about the grieving process being easier if you don't
> view?

I never claimed that - you've imagined that - so why would I have information
on it?

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mogadsheu
While I understand the merit of the energy efficiency implications mentioned
in the article, I actually disagree with this method on grounds of the
potential spread/development of infectious disease.

The vast majority of cultures have rites for taking care of the dead in a tidy
manner. This is partly out of respect and partly for cleanliness purposes.
Corpses that aren’t embalmed or cremated are hotbeds for disease. Having them
naturally degrade seems like a great way for new human-specific evolutions in
disease to grow and spread.

~~~
Cyph0n
Embalming is forbidden in Islam. Corpses are buried directly after ritual
cleaning.

But I tend to agree that composting is a bit... strange.

~~~
walrus01
The western cultural expectation of spending a lot of money on embalming, then
dressing the dead in fancy expensive clothing and putting them in a $5000
ornate wood coffin which will immediately go into the ground to rot is
perverse. It has created economic incentives on the part of funeral services
corporations to extract as much money from a grieving family as possible.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
This is basically it. Particularly in the US where a burial has become
astonishingly crass and perverse.

The size of the plot and headstone. The common use of heavyweight steel for
coffins that can delay decomposition even longer. Concrete grave linings.
Cremation is no better from an impact perspective.

I think they may be aiming for corpses that hang around as long as ancient
Egypt achieved. :)

~~~
briandear
> Particularly in the US where a burial has become astonishingly crass and
> perverse.

Ever been to cemeteries in Paris? Giant monuments, incredibly ornate graves..
The US is far more modest by comparison.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
You mean the 2 or 3 hundred year old ones? Victorians were often crass too. I
meant in the current era.

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danielecook
From a very young age I’ve thought cemeteries were ludicrous. It’s nice to be
able to remember a loved one, but after a few hundred years is it still
necessary? The fact is after a certain number of generations no one is
grieving or remembering or even visiting the cemetery plots. In a nearby
graveyard in London the gravestones are so old and space is so tight that they
moved them all out of the way to make room for a playground.

Who am I to feel so important that I should take up space in perpetuity?

After a few generations, document the gravestones and get rid of them and make
room for a park you can run around in.

~~~
rjf72
This may vary by person. For myself, I'm quite disappointed that my
geneological tree runs dry just a few generations back. I'd love to see where
it, it being me I suppose, began - but it's simply not possible. But today
we're creating what may be a record that, at least ideally, people even
thousands of years from now will be able to view. Imagine being able to see
the thoughts and 'writings' (in a manner of speaking) of your ancestor from
thousands of years past - see the lands that they knew as home (or at least
what became of them), and ideally even see their final resting spot. Perhaps
this does not appeal to you, but I find it extremely intriguing. I mean these
people are quite literally a large part of you. I find it interesting to just
ponder on such things.

It has little to do with grieving or even remembrance. In my case it's mostly
curiosity. In a way it's akin to visiting a museum of you. And in the future
people will be able to do this. This gets even more interesting once you
consider that at some point, perhaps not far from now, there is an extremely
high chance that your descendants will reside on another planet. I see no
reason to believe that these descendants would have any less curiosity about
their heritage.

That playground will eventually give way to some apartment complex, road, or
place to buy crap and nobody will ever know or care that it was there. But the
people of today are what will make up the people of thousands of years from
now. And that lingering connection and curiosity of the past is something that
I expect will probably remain with our species (and even the species we
diverge onto in the future) indefinitely.

~~~
jnbiche
> I'm quite disappointed that my geneological tree runs dry just a few
> generations back.

Have you had a genealogical DNA test done and used 23andme or ancestry.com to
try and connect to distant relatives? I realize many folks have reasonable
privacy concerns about DNA testing[0], but it's highly likely you'll be able
to connect to relatives this way and perhaps trace your genealogy out even
further.

0\. Although it's somewhat out of your hands if you have any relatives
undergoing genealogical DNA testing.

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jxcl

      If I should die before I wake,
      All my bone and sinew take
      Put me in the compost pile
      To decompose me for a while.
    
      Worms, water, sun will have their way,
      Returning me to common clay
      All that I am will feed the trees
      And little fishes in the seas.
    

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOJRiCHhciY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOJRiCHhciY)

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leereeves
I'd probably choose this method of entering eternity if it was available where
I live, but still I wonder: is this safe?

Edit: Ok, I better clarify, I was thinking of the risk of infectious diseases
and other toxins to the people still alive.

~~~
rplst8
Yeah, I feel like a lot of religious practices (burial being one of them)
originated from things that were a detriment to society or seen as "unclean"
and that caused infection, diseases, or maybe just a bad stench. I wonder if
long ago our ancestors learned a lesson about this that they codified in
religion, but forgot the "why" part and now we are just going to repeat
history.

~~~
torpfactory
Our ancestors didn't have microbiology. As long as we pay attention to the
science, we won't be repeating history.

~~~
sremani
The debate is not whether we are more knowledgeable than our ancestors, the
debate is are we any wiser*.

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xwdv
Cemeteries aren’t for the dead, they’re for the living.

~~~
stephencoyner
> Cemeteries aren’t for the dead, they’re for the living.

The living are there 1% of the time. The dead are there 100%. Put the cemetery
in a place that isn't prime real estate because of this was my opinion.

~~~
vlunkr
I think you're being overly dismissive of thousands(?) of years of human
tradition. Yeah, we don't act completely rationally when it comes to death,
because death is a deeply emotional thing, and we're not robots. People honor
the dead by burying them in beautiful places, it's pretty simple.

~~~
mr_toad
Human tradition that originated in practical (at the time) solutions to a
practical problem, that then got dressed up in ritual.

We need the practical solutions, not the ritual.

~~~
vlunkr
I would argue that for most people the ritual is much more important. Because,
again, we’re not robots, traditions are deeply important to us, and some kind
of send-off, be it burial, cremation, Viking burial, etc is part of the
grieving process. It may not be important to some, but if you find yourself
wondering “why do cemeteries get good real estate”, that’s why.

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elektor
Alkaline hydrolysis is another preferable option to ground burial. Much more
environmentally friendly and allows large plots of land to be used for the
living.

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hirundo
A character in Footfall (or was it Oath of Fealty?), by Larry Niven and Jerry
Pournelle, composted the inconvenient body of someone he had murdered. I've
wondered if that was practical and this article says affirmative. But for
purposes of hiding a corpse I'd think it would be painfully slow to decompose.
The man-eating pigs in Hannibal or Deadwood seem like a better bet, converting
it quickly into fertilizer. But then you have to keep pigs.

Is it legal to feed a human corpse to pigs? Maybe it should be. It would seem
to be eco-friendly.

~~~
kakspuut
Who's gonna eat that pig afterwards?

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temp99990
This is interesting though I remember seeing a ted talk on covering the corpse
in fungi to detoxify the corpse while composting because human bodies are
generally highly toxic...

~~~
i_am_nomad
I’m skeptical of this claim, that human bodies are “highly toxic.” What does
that mean, exactly - what toxins are we talking about?

~~~
cobbzilla
Imagine you try the zombie thing and eat a lot of dead flesh. You would get
really sick and maybe die.

I don't know the chemical names offhand, but suffice to say the decomposition
process has plenty of nasty byproducts, not to mention whatever might have
been in the intestinal tract (eating feces == bad).

~~~
vanilla_nut
In all fairness, zombies don't generally eat heavily decomposed bodies. They
tend to eat recently living or even currently living flesh most of the time,
hence their tendency to kill people for their flesh.

On a slightly more serious note... there are plenty of carrion eating animals.
Many of which are capable of eating humans. I'm sure it's not _that_ toxic.

~~~
cobbzilla
Apologies if my example was too beyond the pale, and as you mentioned, even
less effective due to the freshness of the flesh.

iirc the carrion-eating animals have evolved particular mechanisms such that
eating dead flesh doesn't harm them; they can eat a lot of stuff that would
kill us. What is deadly toxic for a human may be nontoxic for a vulture or
cockroach.

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djsumdog
I thought "Green Burials" have been allow in many states for years. It
typically involves minimal embalming, with some sites not even having
tombstones or markers, instead getting state approval to bury the bodies in
nature restoration sites/parks.

I guess that's more passive though, because you're letting a human decompose
like any animal, versus active industrial composting like we do we paper
towels and food waste.

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OBLIQUE_PILLAR
surprised no one has brought up Tibetan sky burial

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LG1J9fnB4s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LG1J9fnB4s)

Parsi burials in "Tower of silence"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opSPc44s9_o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opSPc44s9_o)

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
> surprised no one has brought up Tibetan sky burial

I keep telling people that this is what I want (and I'm serious) but sadly it
doesn't appear to be practical in my part of the world.

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egberts
A nice tribute to Earth Day for the cofounder had experimented with human
corpse composting with his murdered girlfriend.

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erikig
Meh...call me when they approve Sky Burials...

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cbm-vic-20
So... What happens when they inevitably run out of money and go out of
business?

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TheMagicHorsey
Was this a burning issue to be resolved? I learn new things here every day.

~~~
Fomite
Honestly, yes. Like, there were major research projects being done on
alternative burial methods.

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megamindbrian2
Excellent! I can be buried under a tree, like I always wanted.

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AtlasLion
Sounds quite similar to Islamic burial tradition.

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wtdata
"Soylent green is people!"

~~~
bronlund
Of course. If you are going to kill 80% of the population it would be a shame
making them all go to waste :P

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pcunite
This is an ad for recompose.life.

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wii_to_low
ever smelled a compositing body? its pretty nasty

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__tg__
In other news, Americans rediscover the Jewish/Muslim way of burial.

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reallydude
Either you don't understand the traditions you are trying to reference, or the
methodology approved.

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darkpuma
Will they also allow sky burial?

Edit: I was being serious. I would choose a sky burial if given the option.
Feeding scavenger birds is a natural and aesthetically satisfying method of
corpse disposal.

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yters
In general, why treat dead bodies any more specially than any other piece of
organic matter? Use them for compost, eat them, make clothing out of the skin,
etc. What's the problem? We do it to animals, and humans are just another kind
of animal.

~~~
mises
There is a great difference between what is rationally true and what an
emotional being (i.e. a person) will do. See the trolley problem and many
others. For instance, people will stay in a declining stock past the "rational
threshold" because they have developed an emotional attachment to it.

We view people and animals as different. We have a long tradition of viewing
people as different. We have pushed those limits somewhat with organ donation,
but generally speaking, we don't break people down for spare parts. Most
religions and corresponding cultures view people as made by God and having a
small element of the diving. This is the reason people are considered better
than animals, and the reason there are different requirements for veterinary
vs human medicine. Same reason we eat animals without issue.

Maybe you disagree; we are each free to our respective opinions. But most
people don't view humans as "just another kind of animal".

~~~
yters
If that's the case, then why is it a good thing that humans are being used for
compost? Seems inconsistent. Either humans are more sacred than other animals,
and should be treated specially, even when dead. Or, if they don't need to be
treated specially when dead, then why treat them specially at any other point?

I guess this legislation is a way to rationally erode the obsolete emotional
reasons for treating the human body as something special.

~~~
ncallaway
> Either humans are more sacred than other animals, and should be treated
> specially, even when dead

This legislation doesn't force anyone to be composted after their death. It
gives a families and loved ones a new option, without taking away any options.

As such we haven't taken away anyone's options to treat humans specially, or
however they wanted to be treated.

As long as it's safe and doesn't introduce significant negative externalities,
I fail to see why not granting more choices would be a bad idea.

~~~
yters
Yes, that's my point. The legislation treats this as an emotional, opinion
issue. Not an issue where there is a truth of the matter.

