Composting Human Corpses

Currently, many farms and some state transportation departments are composting dead animals. If the Urban Death Project is successful composting dead bodies may include human ones. A research project headed by Katrina Spade in Seattle is working on a method to compost human remains.

Spade envisions the creation of Urban Death Facilities that will include individuals ceremoniously placing their deceased loved ones in the facility where the body will be composted, and then the family can retrieve some of the compost to use in their garden or to plant a memorial tree. Each core of the facility could hold up to 30 bodies. Spade is still developing the technique, and after it is developed there will be social and legal barriers to face in order to make this environmentally friendly process a reality.

See Catrin Einhorn, A Project to Turn Corpses Into Compost, New York Times, Apr. 13, 2015.

Special thanks to Lewis Saret for bringing this article to my attention.