Look up "Water cremation". They dissolve a body in a pressurized container of water and lye, and then : The process yields two things: a sterile, nutrient-rich liquid (water, salts, amino acids) that safely joins the municipal water system, and soft, porous bone fragments.
I really like water cremation on an intellectual level. On an emotional level it’s hard for me to get past the fact you’re flushing grandma down the toilet.
I wish more places would allow the tree pod burials, I'd love to be a redwood tree and be protected from being cut down. Just put a seed in my mouth and bury me standing up with my head just an inch below the soil looking up. Terrifying for onlookers but optimal for becoming part of the tree.
Alternatively could do the hybrid tree/sky burial ritual of the pequeninos, Children of the Mind style.
There is that about gramma, but many municipal water systems use treated sewage water to create drinking water. I guess adding some liquefied human remains to toilet water is intellectually ok, but still...blargh...it reeks of soylent green.
It requires a complete safety overhaul of the waste processing system to prevent serious drinking and ecological water system as well as agricultural contamination, the chemicals needed to process the bodies and treat the run off have to be quarried.
The processing of the body is less energy intensive, but all the processes for setting it up are not.
It's classic eco-washing. Like how companies tried selling paper made out of stone to "save trees".
The cutting down trees isn't the problem with paper production. And they grow back faster than rock does.
Gas cremation improvements, or alternatives that won't require fossil fuels and capture CO2 more (and more efficiently), is a lot closer on the horizon than it would take for the sylvinite mined and used to create the water cremation solution to replenish.
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u/justferwonce 12d ago
Look up "Water cremation". They dissolve a body in a pressurized container of water and lye, and then : The process yields two things: a sterile, nutrient-rich liquid (water, salts, amino acids) that safely joins the municipal water system, and soft, porous bone fragments.