COMPOSTING HUMANS legalized in California

[Vandenberg]

• A California law makes it legal to turn human remains into compost
• The process involves placing the body inside a reusable container along with wood chips and aerating it to allow microbes and bacteria to do their thing
• The law, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom this week, takes effect in 2027

With climate change and sea-level rise as very real threats to our environment, this is an alternative method of final disposition that won’t contribute emissions into our atmosphere.

Micah Truman, founder and CEO of Return Homea, funeral home in the Seattle area that specializes in human composting, said there's been growing demand for the practice in recent years.

'With cremation, instead of sitting with our person and saying goodbye, we are very divorced from the process,' he told The Guardian.
Advocates for the bill, which was signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom this week, have said NOR is a more climate-friendly option

The Catholic Church in the state is against the process.
NOR uses essentially the same process as a home gardening composting system,’ the executive director of the California Catholic Conference, Kathleen Domingo, said in a statement to SFGATE.
She added that the process was developed for livestock, not humans.
‘These methods of disposal were used to lessen the possibility of disease being transmitted by the dead carcass,’ Domingo said.
‘Using these same methods for the “transformation” of human remains can create an unfortunate spiritual, emotional and psychological distancing from the deceased.'

Washington, Colorado and Oregon have all legalized the process of composting human remains.
However, Colorado does not allow the soil to be sold or used to grow food for human consumption.

Under a bill recently passed by New York's state legislature, only cemeteries would be allowed to apply for a license to offer human composting - which the New York State Funeral Directors Association objects to.

'Funeral directors have always essentially prided themselves as being very responsive, fully responsive, to what a person deserves for their own funeral and burial - however they would like it,' Randy McCullough, deputy executive director of the organization, told NY1 News.

'And we still want to do that with this process. We're not opposed at all to the introduction of these alternative disposition processes, per se.'
---from daily mail online 22/09/2022---

A farmer can now do more than be out standing in his field, he can now eventually become part of said field.

D.I.Y. Human Composting is still frowned upon ( hiding the body)
in case you were wondering ;-)

Vandenberg

 

[Creeperpark]

What difference does it make when you're dead? Many states have allowed people to stop embalming bodies and just put the body untouched in a casket and bury it in the ground. .

 

[St. Phatty]

Let the Pigs and the Chickens eat the Dead Humans.

Seems only fair.

 

[Capt.Ahab]

Next thing you know they will be turning the bodies into little green biscuits .

 

[Switcher56]

?

 

[exploziv]

If people were smart, really smart, just a statement like:

The Catholic Church in the state is against the process.
NOR uses essentially the same process as a home gardening composting system,’ the executive director of the California Catholic Conference, Kathleen Domingo, said in a statement to SFGATE.
She added that the process was developed for livestock, not humans.
‘These methods of disposal were used to lessen the possibility of disease being transmitted by the dead carcass,’ Domingo said.
‘Using these same methods for the “transformation” of human remains can create an unfortunate spiritual, emotional and psychological distancing from the deceased.'

.. should really seal the fate of the church. Is that their best argument in this case? Come on!

 

[Capt.Ahab]

?

 

[Ca++]

I wonder how long it takes.
Not very eager accept this. If your compost says 'not for sale in colorado' are you going to grow with it?
Many of us can name what a plant is grown in. Who is going to have a particular liking for humans.
I really don't want to smoke this. It's repulsive. How is it different from cannibalism. Because it was well marinaded?


We have started popping people in a tube with lye and shaking the shit out of them. Just bone dust remains. Then flush.

 

[Vandenberg]

How does it work?
At the facility, a body is placed inside a metal cylinder along with alfalfa, wood chips and straw.
Over the course of 30 days, during which the mixture receives oxygen and is periodically turned, natural microbes in the body and organic material raise the temperature in the vessel to 150 degrees Fahrenheit and break down the remains, including teeth and bone, into a soft soil.
"It's nature doing its work, and it feels almost like this hallelujah moment," Spade says. After another few weeks of drying the mixture, it is ready to distribute.

What You Should Know About Human Composting, a 'Beautiful' Way to 'Go Out with a Bang'

Human composting, the eco-friendly alternative to traditional burial or cremation, transforms the human body into nutrient rich soil

people.com

Vandenberg

 

[Ca++]

Just 30 days? teeth and all? that's surprising.
I wonder about fillings and metal/plastic used for everything from mending bone to eye lenses. They can't have that being found.

I'm not against the idea for my own disposable. It's just the fact I will be bagged and sold that's not right.

 

[RobFromTX]

Next thing you know they will be turning the bodies into little green biscuits .

They want to make soylent green

 

[moose eater]

There's a couple places in Washington State that can bury without embalming, or can actually engage in active composting of remains.

Welcome | White Eagle Memorial Preserve Cemetery near Goldendale, Washington

White Eagle Memorial Preserve Cemetery is a Conservation Burial Ground offering natural burial near Goldendale, Washington. We are a wilderness green cemetery, working with families to create meaningful green burial experiences.

www.naturalburialground.org

Bruce Cockburn's music and a tour of White Eagle Natural Perserve and Cemetery



I figure that most of us have been 'here' long enough, and taken enough from the planet and others, that giving back maximum content to the soil is a bare minimum statement of appreciation.

Burying ashes brings calcium, micro-nutes, and maybe some limited phosphorus, to my understanding. Burying an unembalmed cadaver takes the decomposition from the beginning, likely mostly N, then transitions from there as the carcass disintegrates or decomposes.

We can do home burial where I live, with or without embalming.

 

[Switcher56]

There's a couple places in Washington State that can bury without embalming, or can actually engage in active composting of remains.

Welcome | White Eagle Memorial Preserve Cemetery near Goldendale, Washington

White Eagle Memorial Preserve Cemetery is a Conservation Burial Ground offering natural burial near Goldendale, Washington. We are a wilderness green cemetery, working with families to create meaningful green burial experiences.

www.naturalburialground.org

Bruce Cockburn's music and a tour of White Eagle Natural Perserve and Cemetery



I figure that most of us have been 'here' long enough, and taken enough from the planet and others, that giving back maximum content to the soil is a bare minimum statement of appreciation.

Burying ashes brings calcium, micro-nutes, and maybe some limited phosphorous, to my understanding. Burying an unembalmed cadaver takes the decompositon from the begining, likely mostly N, then transitions from there as the carcass disintegrates or decomposes.

We can do home burial where I live, with or without embalming.

Mother and capitalism cannot coexist!

 

[JKD]

Not only is my weed organic, it's grown in people.

 

[moose eater]

Mother and capitalism cannot coexist!

I think they can, but not with OUR model of predatory capitalism, and resource extractionist views of rape, pillage, and plunder, use it all up, and plan on another planet that might not be feasible..

But 'we'll' need to come to a better understanding of where our limits or parameters need to be before we can have capitlaism and environmentalism function well together. But we'll still likely always be dealing with putting a bridle on human greed.

 

[exploziv]

Just 30 days? teeth and all? that's surprising.
I wonder about fillings and metal/plastic used for everything from mending bone to eye lenses. They can't have that being found.

I'm not against the idea for my own disposable. It's just the fact I will be bagged and sold that's not right.

They did say in article you can get the soil or donate it to a foresting trust to be used. But it can't be sold yet. Also, judging by how they tell us it's a method developed for composting animals, I can for sure tell you that compost will pass some screens and even shredders at some point to ensure all is composted. Basically to give away (or sell but they do say its not allowed) the compost they would screen out the uncompostables and also the stuff that is still solid and untouched. Thats how compost is made, even when wood is the only hard bits it still needs screening. For regular compost turning over is used most times, here they say just they just aerate it. That can't help with breaking down stuff as good as mechanical turning, so I would think they either skipped story about the part where they grind "the compost" to make to compost faster, or simply they don't care about composting all the bones, since they take them away at final screening.

 

[The_Skunkist]

​

 

[moose eater]

Evergreen is the other human composting and natural burial business in Washington State that I was trying to remember earlier..

The report linked here is from a bit over a year and a half ago; March, 2021, I think..

Human composting: How Washington is writing the guidebook to a green burial

Washington legalized the practice of human composting in 2019. Here's how it works and how much it costs.

www.krem.com

Note that processed 'sludge' from our local waste water treatment plant, (consisting of 'compost' resulting from the cleaning of local waste water) is no longer being sold or given to the public for gardening, etc., in Fairbanks, I'm told due to substances (Rx & otherwise) & other toxins that the processing couldn't remove.

Are there substances or toxins in human bodies that might not be helpful to plants/soil? There seems to be in our waste.

 

[exploziv]

Are there substances or toxins in human bodies that might not be helpful to plants/soil? There seems to be in our waste.

I am sure we are cleaner than the same quantity of comercial compost obtained from industrial/municipal sources. The problem with the sludge is that it concentrates all those nasties, and some of them are even preservatives so they are counterproductive to be used in composting as well. Using them on Ag land would also just add a steady content of the nasties each year, so it's not sustenable, cause it's just a matter a time till those lands would be considered contaminated. We actually already have to lower the standards (raise the values allowed) for contamination every few years just so we can live with our past mistakes, anyway!

 

[Cerathule]

We actually already have to lower the standards (raise the values allowed) for contamination every few years just so we can live with our past mistakes, anyway!

If the population explosion keeps on like this, this world will end as a huge dumbster