Oregon Has Legalized Human Composting

Wasn't sure exactly where to post this but came across and thought I'd make a thread on it.

Oregon has just a bill making it the third US state to allow human remains to be 'composted' after death.

Personally, i see this as a good thing mostly. Myself, I'd rather go back into the Earth and have a tree grow out of me or something than have my corpse locked in a casket full of chemicals.

And either way, a person should be allowed to choose the manner of their burial or whatever happens to their body after death.

www.vice.com...

Gov. Kate Brown signed House Bill 2574 into law on Tuesday, adding natural organic reduction to the range of approved after-life options in the west coast state. Sponsored and developed by Rep. Pam Marsh (D - Southern Jackson County), the bill met Oregonians’ growing interest in sustainable alternatives to traditional deathcare. 

“This is a hard issue for people to think about; it's not a decision that any of us get to avoid,” Marsh told Motherboard over the phone. “It has an appeal, certainly not to all consumers, but to many of us who are really looking for ways to think about how our footprint on the earth continues after life is gone.”

The move heeds a growing call from environmentalists across the country to clean up the end-of-life industry. The most common methods of body disposal come with hefty environmental impacts: traditional burials, in which a corpse is embalmed with formaldehyde and placed in a casket underground, permanently occupy large swaths of land and have been found to leach toxins into nearby soil and waterways. Cremation–in which a body is burned into ash—is an energy suck and emits damaging pollutants and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming.

OK...this next part though...i gotta admit...this isn't quite what I was thinking

By comparison, the process of so-called natural organic reduction, which breaks down the body into soil, has a small environmental footprint. For example, Recompose, the country’s first human composting funeral home does it like this: a corpse is placed in a cylinder with organic materials, like wood chips, plants, and straw, then heated and turned repeatedly for several weeks with a hook until it’s broken down into a nutrient-rich soil that can be delivered back to the family or used for planting. 

I was thinking something more like this

Before human composting gained traction, green burials—in which the body is prepared without chemicals and planted underground in an organic, biodegradable container, often underneath a tree sapling—emerged in 1998 as an alternative to traditional high-impact burial methods, according to the Green Burial Council.

The composting method is still illegal in most of the US but a few other States are also considering it.

The practice remains illegal in most states, leaving those who want an eco-friendly end-of-life option stuck with a limited range of options. But legislators in states like New York and Delaware have, in recent months, considered bills that would change this. If adopted widely across the country, human composting could cut down on the U.S. funeral industry’s environmental impact and, Buller says, change the way we talk about death. 

“Our culture has been in either witness or avoidance mode,” she said. “I think it's a signifier of larger movements… away from fear, and toward curiosity, around how to make death and dying more meaningful and more personally engaging,” she said.

I have to say, I do agree with that last part. Our culture has a strange obsession with avoiding everything to do with death.

I dunno, how does ATS feel about the idea of being turned into nutrient rich soil and returned to your family for planting?

Leave me on the prairie. Between the coyotes, wild hogs, and buzzards, I'll be composted in no time.

a reply to: dug88

i'm not wanting to eat something that may have been grown in someones garden using bio enriched soil.

if's it unsafe to use human waste, a whole body can't be good.

originally posted by: dug88

I dunno, how does ATS feel about the idea of being turned into nutrient rich soil and returned to your family for planting?

I'll admit my initial knee-jerk reaction was something like.. WTF! Hell no....

But no, I don't actually have a problem with it at all. One benefit from doing it this way, as opposed to simply burying the body and planting a tree, is that you will never have to worry about the possibility of the roots eventually pushing any of your bones up and out of the ground.

Also, this method would really make you more a part of the tree, which sounds pretty nice to me.

I've been telling my family for a long time that to insure to decompose on soil, I want to leave my body for forensic studies, but only if it is to be left on the ground until only the bones remain.

I want to give back to the earth instead of becoming ashes. It will be more useful and will take less space, so to speak.

a reply to: hounddoghowlie

Haha, I agree with you. Going back into nature, yes, but not in a garden, unless it's for flowers only I guess?

Sgt. Mackenzie
Joseph Kilna Mackenzie

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JOSEPH KILNA MACKENZIE
Sgt. Mackenzie Lyrics

Original Scottish Version
Lay me doon in the caul caul groon
Whaur afore monie mair huv gaun
Lay me doon in the caul caul groon
Whaur afore monie mair huv gaun

When they come a wull staun ma groon
Staun ma groon al nae be afraid

Thoughts awe hame tak awa ma fear
Sweat an bluid hide ma veil awe tears

Ains a year say a prayer faur me
Close yir een an remember me

Nair mair shall a see the sun
For a fell tae a Germans gun

Lay me doon in the caul caul groon
Whaur afore monie mair huv gaun

Lay me doon in the caul caul groon
Whaur afore monie mair huv gaun

Whaur afore monie mair huv gaun

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On second thought, naaaw. I still want to be torched, after whatever doo-dads from my ravaged body have been harvested. I am sorry for anyone who desperately needs any bit of it. I don't buy the horrific environmental impact of cremation. I'd like to see more proof of that. I wand my husk to be cremated and put in a concrete mini-bunker with those of my good friend, deceased of whom I still have his ashes, my Darlin', my Mom, and our cat Jenner, who, through a series of misadventures, ended up cremated after she died at the vet's.

I don't have a problem with people being naturally interred into the Earth, IF, they or their heirs own the patch of ground. I guess I don't have any problem with folks being composted, although it can't be as wholesome as described in the OP. I've composed a LOT of stuff in my life, and I can't imagine tossing a squirrel into the mix, let alone a human body, which is "hooked and turned" and, oh wait, this is the best part, "returned to the family". "Wow! Uncle Bob sure did fluff up didn't he? I bet our cucumbers would LOVE growing in him!!!!"

I guess I'm just too old fashioned to see that as a viable manner of dealing with the huge amount of dead which this world produces. If somebody can afford to do it, and they want ol' Uncle Bob turned and composted, I don't have a problem with it. I think it's weird, but fine, go get yourself green.

a reply to: coamanach

and you know that some big agribusiness will start baggin it up, or sell it by the train car. big bucks to be made.

a reply to: dug88

The other day my son was worry about me going to the forest. My health is not what it used to be and he thinks I could fall in one of my lonely little adventures, without someone around to assist me.

I said : "I rather die in the forest alone than end my days in a city. I belong there and if that happen, don't doubt that I died happy".

originally posted by: hounddoghowlie
if's it unsafe to use human waste, a whole body can't be good.

Indeed. Prions?

Overwhelming evidence shows that prions resist degradation and persist in the environment for years, and proteases do not degrade them. Experimental evidence shows that unbound prions degrade over time, while soil-bound prions remain at stable or increasing levels, suggesting that prions likely accumulate in the environment.

a reply to: dug88

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

I say do it.

a reply to: dug88

Apparently Oregon has followed along in the ritual...

World’s First Human Composting Facility is Coming to Seattle in 2021 (Dec 1, 2019)

The revolutionary system converts human remains into soil as an alternative to cremation or burial.

In a move hailed as a positive step by environmentalists, Washington became the first U.S. state to legalize the composting of human bodies in May of this year.

And now, the Evergreen State will become home to the world’s first human composting facility in 2021 thanks to Katrina Spade, founder and CEO of Recompose, after the legislation she helped enact goes into effect in May 2020.

Where's grandma?

She's in the Garden.

I have no interest in being put in a cylinder with wood chips and rotated until I turn to mulch.

I do, however, aspire to a green burial. I've told my wife that I want to be wrapped in a linen or cotton sheet, buried in the dirt well beneath the surface, my body allowed to go back whence it came.

The whole embalming and hermetically seal box thing is just freakin' weird! I do not get it.

a reply to: dug88

Personally, i see this as a good thing mostly. Myself, I'd rather go back into the Earth and have a tree grow out of me or something than have my corpse locked in a casket full of chemicals.

As long as I don't end up on some elites arboretum entry way
upside down as a vase with pine cone sticking out of my ass.

Any burial is a good burial.

It’s really because Kate Brown failed to buy those black plastic FEMA caskets back in the day. Now post covid, they’re 8 times the price. Easier just to let the dissenters rot on the side walk next to the other human waste.

a reply to: incoserv

out in the back yard in a pine box. have lot of great relatives that were buried that way. that's all poor white trash could afford.

Screw all of that.

My will stipulates that my buddies HAVE to steal a boat and place me on it then light it on fire.

Viking funeral babee.

VIKING!

I can't see any problem with this at all.

I've suffered through so many funerals in my life that I've lost my taste for them and have reached the point where I simply don't want anything resembling a funeral. The stupid amount of money wasted on them is another issue for me. Talk about throwing money away. I've made it clear I want cremation and no funeral or money spent, and I can easily see the idea of allowing a person to simply return to the soil as a good one.

My thoughts on this are there should be no business surrounding it and no money involved. Nature will do the work. Put me in a burlap bag or something and bury me at some random location in the middle of nowhere. I'd not be bothered at all about that idea. Dig a pit, start a fire in the bottom and toss me in. It's all good with me.

If any money is spent, I'd rather it be spent on others who need it than wasted on a dead body.

a reply to: DBCowboy

I am NOT going to be met at the halls of Valhalla and claim that my body is now making ferns grow or someone's god-damned tomato plant.