Fertilize your lawn and flowers with deceased? Love those green golf courses, city flower displays, perhaps even community vegetable gardens? The bounty to the eye could be due to human remains. Behind this supply of fertilizer is the process alkaline hydrolysis. In the funeral trade it is called liquid cremation. And it’s likely at or coming to your city, state or province soon. It’s been passed in the State of Wisconsin (the Dairy State) as Senate Bill 228. The bill places the use of alkaline hydrolysis under the same requirements that apply under current law to conventional cremation. Alkaline hydrolysis is a process that uses water, alkaline chemicals, high pressure and heat to reduce human remains for final disposition. Reduced to a chunky slurry of liquid and bone fragments a maximum of one eighth inch in size, the human slurry nay be disposed of in any lawful matter that does not harm the environment. And the container holding the remains has to be biodegradable and opaque. (Quoting from Bill 228). It is stated that the slurry is sterile. Under Rule 503 of the EPA, the slurry of human remains may be spread or sprayed in public parks, ball fields, cemeteries, golf courses. Anywhere sewage sludge is now spread or sprayed. For a peek at the equipment used for alkaline hydrolysis, you can go to this link. If you are still not queasy. And just when you thought society could not get any sicker. https://www.cremationassociation.org/page/alkalinehydrolysis
About twenty years ago I delivered parts or equipment to a waste disposal department and crew in a city in SW Oklahoma. We drove by some of the fields where HUMAN WASTE was being pumped to irrigate or fertilize or dispose of, whatever. Fields of CROPS, being grown for HUMAN CONSUMPTION. Legally. (i.e. no conspiracy. (well, the motives behind it may be) Simply legal waste disposal.)
Dunno, the jury is still out. If a person really thinks about it, we, like every biologic on the face of the planet aren’t supposed to be locked up in a air tight lasts-a-million-years casket and take up acreage. Me thinks we’re supposed to rot and fertilize the earth anyway and to be environmentally friendly and not take up a bunch of space when we die is somehow practical to me.
Oh wow! "Aquamation" just became legal in Georgia last year. Who would have thought. There's already a place in Tallapoosa that does this.
I am hoping for a simple unembalmed burial. I would request it on my property if I could, but that would perhaps burden the family with the property even when they wished to sell it. I hope to have a tree planted on my grave, but I probably won't get that wish either....
' it will grow on you ' p.s. private burials are very inexpensive, and there are bags (for burial) now available instead of caskets, to be used where permitted on private property in many states.
I have no problem with this. (My ex-MIL was pretty much fertilizer while she was alive, but that's another story.) I agree with Bobby and Don; we were all meant to return to the earth anyhow. Slurry or ashes; it's all the same to me. I wonder if Vitamix has a hand in this?? ETA--I just noticed that it says "no DNA left." That's good; I wouldn't want the potatoes to look like family members.
Actually, I think that is an excellent idea. I haven't heard of it here. I want my ashes scattered to the wind. If I could be returned to the earth, I'd like that very much. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust, you know.
This is on my property: I doubt there are many places in these regions that don't have cemeteries. Lots of them are right in the middle of the front yard. I can't imagine anyone really caring. @Brian Naginoth: What size is that container? What volume are we reduced to via that process? I've commented before of at least one burial ground in North Carolina that plops you in the ground "Old School": No box, no embalming, no marker. The only thing modern about it is they take your GPS coordinates so as to not double-book the hole and loved ones know where to whizz.
The process results in approximately 32% more cremated remains than flame-based cremation and may require a larger urn.
I was trying to figure out exactly what constitutes "the remains," since the article talks about releasing the "effluent" into the public sewer system. Maybe someone will explain the particulars for those of us who are Hydrolysis Impaired. Paging @Lon Tanner !! Can you help with this??
Well it doesn't say "toilet," but it does say the effluent is directed to the public sewer system. Not sure how that works which is why I asked someone "in the know" to tell us what's what.
Dam talk about giving back to the community . I will be cremated and my ashes thrown over a place in the Gulf of Mexico- but this opens up a new way of distribution for some folks.