CULLOWHEE (North Carolina): The body of the tiny 78-year-old woman was brought to a hillside at Western Carolina University still clad in a blue hospital gown. She was laid on a bed of wood chips, and then more were heaped atop her. If all goes as hoped, the body will turn into compost. It is a startling next step in the natural burial movement.
Armed with an environmental fellowship, Katrina Spade, 37, Seattle resident with a degree in architecture, has proposed an alternative: a facility for human composting. The woman laid to rest in wood chips is a first step in testing how it would work. "Composting makes people think of banana peels and coffee grounds," Spade said. But "our bodies have nutrients. What if we could grow new life after we've died?" Scientists agree that human beings can be composted. Already countless farms across the country compost the bodies of dead livestock. "I'm absolutely sure that it can work," said Lynne Carpenter-Boggs, a soil scientist at Washington State University who is on the advisory board of the Urban Death Project, a nonprofit that Spade founded.
The process is surprisingly simple: Place nitrogen-rich material, like dead animals, inside a mound of carbon-rich material, like wood chips and sawdust, adding moisture or extra nitrogen and making other adjustments as needed. Microbial activity will start the pile cooking. Bacteria release enzymes that break down tissue into component parts like amino acids, and eventually, the nitrogen-rich molecules bind with the carbon-rich ones, creating a soil-like substance. Temperatures reach around 140 degrees, often higher, and the heat kills common pathogens. Done correctly, there should be no smell. Bones also compost, though they take longer than tissue.
Spade has designed a building for human composting that aims to marry the efficiency of this biological process with the ritual and symbolism that mourners crave. Each Urban Death facility would be centered around a three-storey vault that she calls "the core". Loved ones would carry their deceased, wrapped in a shroud, up a circular ramp to the top.
There, during a "laying in" ceremony, mourners would place the body inside the core, which could hold perhaps 30 corpses at a time. Over the next several weeks, each body would move down the core until the first stage of composting was complete.
In a second stage, material would be screened, along with any remaining bones, and the compost would be cured. Spade estimates that each body, combined with the necessary materials such as wood chips and sawdust, would yield enough compost to fill a cube three feet by three feet.
Weeks or months later, survivors could collect some of the compost to use as they saw fit, perhaps in their garden or to plant a tree. Spade foresees the rest going to nearby parks or conservation lands. Each human composting would cost about $2,500, a fraction of the price of conventional burial, Spade estimates. She hopes to build the first facility in Seattle, then to develop a template that other communities can use for locally designed facilities.
First, though, she and her supporters will have to navigate an array of obstacles. Many Americans find the idea of composting human bodies repulsive. Then there are legal barriers. State laws vary: In the last few years, several have legalized water cremation. But in many other states, bodies must be buried, entombed, cremated or donated to science. Questions remain about how human compost should be used. Certain pathogens can survive composting, and livestock that have died from diseases are banned from composting.
Stay updated on the go with Times of India News App. Click here to download it for your device.
Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang
Turn corpses into compost and let life bloom
Dengan url
http://pijitwajah.blogspot.com/2015/04/turn-corpses-into-compost-and-let-life.html
Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya
Turn corpses into compost and let life bloom
namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link
Turn corpses into compost and let life bloom
sebagai sumbernya
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar