Funerallink Blogs

Tag: funeral traditions

  • Four Ways to Make Your Death Eco-Friendly

    Four Ways to Make Your Death Eco-Friendly

    Death planning is one of the last things a person can think about. After all, with the many exciting and interesting places and memories to experience, dying is on the end of a life agenda. However, with death’s inevitability and uncertainty, one can always prepare for when the worst comes.

    The good thing about planning for one’s death is that many providers are willing to help a person organize every bit of detail. Furthermore, many people are leaning towards sustainability and eco-friendliness as green deaths become a topic of discussion these past few years.

    If you want to try greener methods, here are few you need to learn.

    Becoming Plant Food

    Introduced in 2011, the Coeio Infinity Burial Suit covers the human remains with organic cotton and lines it with specialist mushroom spores so when the remains are brought down to earth, it literally becomes a gift to the soil.

    The mushrooms will feed on the remains, break down its organic material, and remove the toxins from the environment. As the plants use the toxic remnants from the decomposed body, it will flourish its growth.

    Transform Yourself into a Floral Reef

    If you are fond of the sea activity and the ecosystem below the waters, you may want to be one with the fish for all of your eternity. But how is this possible? Your cremated remains will be mixed with concrete to create a “pearl.” After creating this “pearl,” you are lowered on the ocean floor so the “pearl” becomes a new habitat for marine life.

    Because natural coral reefs have been destroyed by bombs and overfishing, creating a pearl is a new way to at least recover the damage that has been done by mankind. This method was introduced by Eternal Reefs as they continue to devote themselves in providing a nurturing habitat for marine life and ecosystems through the creation of “pearls.”

    Mixed and One with the Earth

    In the United States, the state of Washington has become the first place where composting of human remains has been legally allowed. With the use of an enclosed machine, human remains are mixed in with wood chips, greens, straws and soil as it becomes compost.

    What’s more, it was determined that carbon emissions from this process is significantly reduced by 80%. The compost is given to surviving families or is donated to conservation groups.

    Reborn as a Tree

    Popularized as the Capsula Mundi, this world’s capsule is an egg-shaped and organic casket for a body positioned in a fetal likeness and is buried to the ground. As the casing breaks down, the organic remains of the body becomes nutrients to the tree sapling above it.

    As the organic matter nourishes the sapling, it will fertile the soil and help grow it into a tree that will purify the air we breathe. Founders, Raoul Bretzel and Anna Citelli hopes that one day, cemeteries can be a place of trees rather than headstones.

     

    Photos: Pexels.com

  • Turning Bodies into Compost: How Recompose Redefines Funeral Traditions

    Turning Bodies into Compost: How Recompose Redefines Funeral Traditions

    This planet is the only one we have and unfortunately, it’s facing a detrimental issue of damage and degradation. Faced with this concern and the increasing problems of environmental imbalance, many people (scientists, researchers, and others) are committing to a life of eco-friendly consciousness.

    With this in mind, Recompose was born. If you raised your eyebrows wondering what this organization is and how it helps Mother Earth, read more below.

    What is Recompose?

    Recompose became Katrina Spade’s answer to her mind-boggling question of what will happen to her body when she dies. When she graduated last 2011 from her degree in architecture, she realized the inevitability of her death. Because of this realization, she was encouraged to look into options of how her body will leave this world. Unsatisfied of what is already available, she spent her moments from then until now for what she calls, “natural organic reduction.”

    Last December, after numerous feasibility studies, fundraising efforts and legislative actions, Recompose was finally able to cater to clients and turned these bodies into compost. Recompose operates outside Seattle and is catering to 10 bodies at the moment. Spade initially planned to operate at 70-100 bodies at a time however, the pandemic put a restriction to this desire.

    Understanding Recompose and Its Operations

    Just like you, we’re wondering how recompose makes this process possible. One of the most interesting factors that made this possible was through recompose’s “vessels.” These vessels are shiny white stacked hexagonal tubes. When a family brings in a body, the staff handles the body and puts it inside the vessel along with straw, alfalfa, and wood chips.

    Once inside the container, it is heated to an optimal temperature that mixes in carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and water for decomposition. Over an average of 30 days, microbes will break down the body mixes in with the compost materials.

    The Impact of Recompose to Its Environment

    Unlike other available ways of sending our beloved ones to their life after death, recompose actually saves one metric ton of carbon dioxide emissions. Breaking down the body into compost is a process that is nutrient-giving and life-sustaining. Recompose’s process encourages a method that is clean and useful to the environment.

    In an interview with Philip Olson, a technology ethicist and professor at Virginia Tech says that recomposes process of dealing with dead bodies is “sort of an acknowledgement that urban life is the main form of life.”

    Although Spade has several competitors already with sustainable means of turning bodies into compost, she admits that there is a lot of steps to take. “If we’re trying to make an impact on climate change, which we are, it’s going to take more than just recompose,” she said.