Human Composting, Liquid Cremation: People Want to Go Green, Even After Death

Katrina Spade grew up on a dead-end dirt road in New Hampshire. Her family raised cows, and they ate what they raised. She watched the animals die -- sometimes naturally, sometimes slaughtered for food. Spade’s parents worked in the health-care industry and often spoke about their patients’ end-of-life struggles and their deaths. None of it was morbid to Spade. “From an early age,” she says, “I always had a good idea of the cycle of life.”

Later on, while she was pursuing a degree in architecture, Spade began thinking about Western death rituals. Dying is an inherent, natural part of life. Why, she wondered, did humans insist on being cremated or else embalmed with formaldehyde, sealed inside a lacquered casket and entombed in the ground? Both practices are harmful to the environment.

“They didn’t feel meaningful to me,” she says. “Back when I was thinking about cremation and burial, I didn’t want the very last thing I did on this earth to be toxic.”

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from Salisbury News http://bit.ly/2QmKC0w