Oregon Has Legalized Human Composting (vice.com) 95
Oregon is now the third state in the US to allow a deathcare option that's gaining popularity for its environmental benefits: human composting. From a report: Gov. Katie 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. The move follows Washington passing a similar law in 2019 and Colorado last month.
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. The move follows Washington passing a similar law in 2019 and Colorado last month.
Just strap my corpse to the ground (Score:5, Funny)
Tie one end of a bungie cord to me. Strap the other end to a hydrogen filled dirigible, covered in fireworks. Douse me with gasoline. Send up the dirigible until the bungie cord is fully stretched out. Light me on fire, release the straps, and watch my flaming corpse rocket into the air and blow up the dirigible.
It's a simple request, really. And who doesn't love fireworks?
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"Mad" Mike Hughes, is that you ?
Are you back from the dead ?
They didn't like that you claimed that the paradise was flat ?
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Except the flaming body would just bounce off the dirigible after igniting it. The hydrogen would make a nice fireball but it wouldn't detonate, and a suitable waste container would still be necessary for your charred remains.
Need more high explosives.
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That's what the fireworks are for!
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The advantage of high explosives is that it contains its own oxidizer.
If you need to dispose of a corpse, high explosives are the best. [youtu.be]
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Throw a match onto my petrol-soaked body outside a bunker in Berlin.
No wait, that's been done before hasn't it?
Re:Just strap my corpse to the ground (Score:5, Funny)
Stick my body up a tree. That way people will look up to me after I am dead.
Spike Milligan
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asking for a friend (Score:3)
How long does it take and can cadaver dogs still find human remains?
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Because there's a large difference in the amount of CO2 released in the two cases. I saw a meme post on facebook where they naively and stupidly thought that carbon neutral meant no breathing. Yes, you can breathe, it emits CO2, but you are emiting fastly less CO2 by breathing than you do by clear cutting down a forest, and yet people try to equate those two things. Reducing CO2 does not mean eliminating all CO2.
Cremation though I suspect is still vastly better than getting a giant and expensive metal c
Re:Breathing releases CO2 (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact you release no net CO2 by breathing - 100% of the CO2 you exhale comes from hydrocarbons in your food, which were originally formed by plants capturing CO2 from the atmosphere. Of course, there may be net CO2 emissions from growing and processing that food (farm equipment, factories,etc), but that's usually counted elsewhere.
Most problematic CO2 emissions fall into one of two categories:
1) Fossil fuel emissions: there you're releasing carbon that was geologically sequestered over the course of millions of years, and the geological carbon cycle is VERY slow - our current emissions completely dwarf both all other geologic sources, and the rate at which new carbon gets sequestered.
2) Ecosystem disruption. Clear-cutting a forest is a problem for CO2 "emissions" primarily because the new ecosystem that is created (grasslands, shrub-lands, desert, urban space, etc) supports far less biomass per acre, and thus stores far less carbon. Even if you immediately submerged all the clear-cut wood to prevent any CO2 emissions, you've still reduced the rate at which CO2 is being removed from the atmosphere and converted into soil.
Re:Breathing releases CO2 (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd limit it to one. Fossil carbon extraction. But this would have to include things like burning peat, melting permafrost (and thus releasing methane) etc.
There are lots of reasons why ecosystem disruption is generally bad, but CO2 levels aren't really among them...unless that results in fossil carbon being released.
Of course, in part this depends on the time frame in which you are considering things. Trees store carbon for their lifetime, but release it after they die...unless steps are taken to preserve the lumber. And those, also, tend to be temporary. Animals are similar, but replace lumber with meat. And their time-frame is usually shorter.
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>But this would have to include things like burning peat, melting permafrost (and thus releasing methane) etc.
None of that is fossil - that's all still carbon in the ecological carbon cycle, NOT in the geological carbon cycle. Given enough time, some of that carbon may be geologically sequestered, but most of it will end up back in the atmosphere through purely biological processes within centuries or at most millenia of it being pulled from the atmosphere. In contrast, most geologically sequestering h
Re: Breathing releases CO2 (Score:2)
Re:Breathing releases CO2 (Score:5, Funny)
The real problem with "CO2" is that slashdot still doesn't support unicode.
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Cremation uses gas.
I recommend next time before you act all superior in your amazing intellect, you first make sure you didn't say something stupid.
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Composting is for rural Oregonians who pride themselves on being one with Nature. Urban Oregonians are cremated gratis by their local Antifa.
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We might want to stop pumping carbon out of the ground and burning it. Eating plants then exhaling CO2, which is captured by plants again isn't the primary focus.
I'll offer you a compromise. We can pump carbon out of the ground, but it can only be used for things that do not degrade easily like plastics, and we must bury them back in the ground when we're done with them.
This is my plan (Score:5, Interesting)
I use to want to go the cremation route but when I started hearing about this I was sold with almost no convincing. I mean, I know my cadaver is just an empty shell once I die but wouldn't it be cool to be composted, then the dirt that's left behind used to plant a tree with a little placard with my name.
It will help the environment while at the same time letting me checkoff the vanity box one last time when I die. Sounds good to me.
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Okay the tree and the placard are my last fuck you :D
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The cremation route is safer. Just like consuming human flesh, not disposing of it carefully is a general health problem. Infectious agents, generally speaking it is safer all round to combust it, any infectious agents eliminated, a matter of good habit. We can take greater risk with DNA we do not share infectious agents with. Time it with the sunrise, symbolic like, so using mirrors, the rising sun, the solar oven sends you off to the new world. The solar crematorium located with nice views to the east for
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I have no guilt about going the cremation route. For a first-world urban dweller, I'll bet my carbon footprint is in the lower 50%. Non-driver, don't travel, recycle where I think it makes sense.
I'm willing to splurge a bit on my exit.
Eeeewww. (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm still getting use to the idea that my garden compost from the counting comes from the sewage plant. I probably contributed to my own compost I guess. But growing tomatoes in Grandma is just sickening.
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And yet, some of the the water molecules that you drink every day in your Coca Cola will have been peed out through many creatures, almost certainly including some molecules that have been drunk from a warthog's blood by a leech.
Don't drink Coca Cola. Trust me.
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People still choose to swim in oceans, despite the well-known fact that ocean water is 1% rain, 99% fish pee.
And the rain is mostly just evaporated fish pee.
Re:Eeeewww. (Score:5, Funny)
Actually no, that's a common misconception. The fact is that pool water is 1% water, 99% pee. For oceans, the actual numbers are 5% water, 95% fish pee and 5% plastics.
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Math. It works 105% of the time.
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Don't eat, drink, breathe, etc. :P
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Don't eat, drink, breathe, etc. :P
Watch it sunshine, with an attitude like that you'll die and start producing methane. If you do that we'll send the green police round to get you, and where will you be then?
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I will be dead so I wouldn't care. ;)
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Doesn't even make me a little squeamish harvesting my tomatoes from something like this. Other, perfectly acceptable fertilizers (Think worm-tea, chicken manure, milorganite) come from things normally thought of as "waste". And it's much better from the chemical concoctions being applied to traditional commercial crops...
Third state? (Score:3)
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Veritable above-ground "hydrocarbon storage facilities" to be sure... even the non-Catholics know not to cremate that shit unless you want a grease fire.
Which is cool (Score:3)
until stuff like bacteria gets recycled back into the food supply. Let's keep people a little deeper in the ground or burn them up.
worst part about this (Score:3)
The worst part about this is the Rep referring to people as 'consumers'. What you do with your body after death is a personal matter.
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The worst part about this is the Rep referring to people as 'consumers'. What you do with your body after death is a personal matter.
Technically, you are being consumed. It just take a while.
Need a law? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is basically the oldest, most basic, primitive method of a funeral. It's basically "Just take my dead body and bury it." Yeah, they heat it up to 131 to kill most diseases and mix in some wood and 'good bacteria', but that is about it. The fact it needs a new law is how conservatives convince people that government regulation.
The truth is you should need a toxic waste disposal license to buy a person the traditional way - with cancer causing formaldehyde, in a box full of expensive metal, plastic, and toxic varnishes.
Re:Need a law? (Score:4, Informative)
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Please complete the sentence.
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As pointed out, "green" burials were already allowed. Clearly its been the left limiting burial practices.
Ants will clean a Skeleton (Score:2)
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Obligatory Alpha Centauri reference (Score:2)
It is every citizen's final duty to go into the tanks, and become one with all the people.
-- Chairman Sheng-ji Yang, "Ethics for Tomorrow"
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Do you want to know something that is absolutely crazy? I posted the same thing at 6:43, I never saw your post because I was looking up the reference. We posted the exact same thing at almost the same time.
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Dammit! How did I sleep through this thread?
This reminds me... of SMAC (Score:2)
"It is every citizens final duty to go into the tanks and become one with all people" - Chairman Yang
https://alphacentauri.fandom.c... [fandom.com]
Me? (Score:4, Interesting)
I want my body dumped 10 miles into the woods and picked apart by coyotes and vultures.
Soylent Green (Score:1)
Soylent Green
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Euthanasia, then fertiliser (Score:1)
I saw the movie of our future (Score:2)
In Jersey.... (Score:5, Funny)
In Jersey, this has been offered as a "service" by various local "businessmen" for many decades....
1st rule of Jersey; no witnesses.
2nd rule of Jersey; see first.
Yeah, no. (Score:2, Funny)
Compost is for kitchen waste.
My ass is going to have its molecular bonds broken down in a nice cheerful exothermic reaction; the bigger, the better. Preferably alongside drunken brawls, blackjack, and hookers.
Have some dignity, for crying out loud.
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Have you managed to find an undertaker who can get a hydrogen bomb on the black market?
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At some point exothermic reactions stop being 'cheerful' and become terrifying. So, no nuclear explosions at the wake. Besides, think of the hookers, you insensitive clod!
George Carlin predicts it again (Score:5, Insightful)
"Hey! Here’s another place we can put some low-cost housing: CEMETARIES!!! There’s another idea whose time has passed! Saving all the dead people up for one part of town?! What the hell kind of a medieval, superstitious, religious, bullshit idea is that?! Plough these motherfuckers up, plough them into the streams and rivers of America, we need that phosphorous for farming! If we’re going to recycle, let's get serious."
- George Carlin
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"Hey! Here’s another place we can put some low-cost housing: CEMETARIES!!! There’s another idea whose time has passed! Saving all the dead people up for one part of town?! What the hell kind of a medieval, superstitious, religious, bullshit idea is that?! Plough these motherfuckers up, plough them into the streams and rivers of America, we need that phosphorous for farming! If we’re going to recycle, let's get serious." - George Carlin
One of the greatest comedians ever. Also, becoming one of the greatest prophets ever.
Think if he were still with us. His rants would be legendary in this fucked-up world.
A 3-hour podcast with Joe Rogan would last a week, and end with "I'm just gettin' fucking started."
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One of the greatest comedians ever. Also, becoming one of the greatest prophets ever.
Eh?
Apart from the phosphorus thing, exhuming bodies moving cemeteries out of the way is not a new thing.
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George made the specific point/prediction of recycling fresh humans. Which IS a new thing.
Dismissing that as a "phosphorus thing", is like being excited for a Girl Scout cookie called Soylent Green.
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I actually like the idea of cemeteries - it uses religious people's superstitions, to leave a small area from being turned into a parking lot.
Yes the use of formaldehyde, caskets, and grave stones are psychotic with our current unsustainable overpopulation; but if my body could be dumped in shallow hole (after organ donation and/or scientific study/medical student training) in a cemetery, and a slow growing tree planted over it (no plaque) - then that area could be a net good. Being a cemetery, that tree is
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Wouldn't really be feasible without significant changes to cemeteries. First they'd have to space the graves really far apart, or in a few years they'd have to cut down trees. Second they'd have to impose restrictions on what kinds of trees, or they could end up killing each other, shading out saplings, etc. You'd have to bequeath a pretty good chunk of cash for the maintenance of the tree, both through its first 5-10 years and afterwards. And of course they'd need to be trimmed and sometimes removed if the
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Yeah, cemeteries would need "forest" areas, and that'll probably not happen because there's less money or tithes to be made from that.
Indigenous trees don't need any maintenance - they've existed for millions of years before hominids even evolved.
The problem with just planting a tree without the religious people considering the area "consecrated", is that after you're dead it can just be cut down for a quick buck.
Need this in Washington, DC (Score:1)
Oregon. It figures. (Score:1)
The hippies already have a head start on composting.
Probably Not Good For Me (Score:2)
So interesting... (Score:3, Funny)
I'm dying to find more about this option to be more sustainable in death.
BULLSHIT! (Score:2, Funny)
Oh sure, everyone's happy when Oregon does it but when I do it then it's "premeditated murder". Is there no justice in this nation?!
Half way there for me (Score:3)
I'm not so interested in feeding the insects. I prefer mammals. Seems easier too.
There are coyotes just across the street.
No prep necessary. No transportation. No digging.
Just toss me into the field. I'll be gone in thirty minutes. You'll know, from the howls.
And I'm in a major city, outside a metropolis, albeit at the edge of the suburbs.
A Wood Chipper Makes Them Break Down Faster (Score:4, Funny)
Just have to find someone who doesn't mind cleaning it when done.
I don't care what they do with my body (Score:1, Interesting)
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And the deceased should care about a death certificate why? Seems to me that if the government refuses to issue one then the deceased can't be considered dead and it's up to the government to prove they are if they want to eg. cut off SSI payments or levy an inheritance tax on the estate. I have a power of attorney set up if I'm ever incapacitated and can't handle my own affairs, and if I'm not officially dead then the transfers of all my assets to beneficiaries is just... me gifting stuff to people. If the
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The Twilight Zone "Evergreen" (2002) (Score:2)
Predicted this... https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Some have been known to call me...Timmy? (Score:2)
"And in the early to mid 21st century, class, the environmental fads got out of control, with people letting their bodies rot away instead of being traditionally buried."
"But what did they have against carbon sequestration?"
"They were idiots. Moreover, when nanotech became capable of reinvigorating dessicated brain cells, many of our ancestors were techno-resurrected. But not them."
"Sounds like we dodged a bullet."
"Yes, Timmy. We did."
Meanwhile Mendocino is anti-compost (Score:2)
"For nearly 20 years, Cold Creek Compostâs owner has been fighting to keep his business alive [willitsnews.com]"
Humanure (Score:3)
I have a wood chipper (Score:2)
So.. how do I do this? Do I go to the morgue or Home Depot?
Hmmm... (Score:2)
Hmm... It seems there are quite a number of members of Congress who are already composting, not to mention the president.
Self-sustaining environment in space (Score:3)
Regardless of quotes from TV shows, any conceivable self-sustaining (i.e. not depending from a constant flow of supplies from Mother Earth) human environment in outer space will need something like this (among many other things).
(Personally I love the idea here and now; but I am afraid I am too old to see it happen where I live, in time for my departure)
This is a really boneheaded move (Score:2)
Oregon is going to become a mecca for gang and mob killings because human remains detection canines won't be able to distinguish between a composted human and one that was buried for nefarious reasons.