23
votes
Arizona governor signs bill approving human composting burials
Link information
This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.
- Title
- Gov. Hobbs signs 'Grandpa in the Garden' bill, paving way for human composting in Arizona
- Published
- Apr 6 2024
- Word count
- 247 words
$5000 to compost a body? Can’t you just set grandpa out in the backyard and wait a while?
Not legally. Also, large amounts of rotting meat attracts both vermin and other animals who aren't choosy about the freshness of their food. "Buried six feet under" isn't just a meme.
Fair enough but I don't see how digging a six foot hole costs five grand. Isn't this the exact same thing as the normal funeral process but just skipping the coffin? Isn't a coffin burial just a slow version of composting?
A funeral is not just digging a hole. Typically the price of these services includes things like transporting the body, storing the body before the funeral (can be necessary if the composting farm has limited space and is currently occupied), death certificate filing, medical examiner taxes (if applicable) and any other costs associated with the service. Additionally, with basically all human composting operations, the body is not just plopped in the ground, but rather enclosed in a biodegradable container/cocoon with other materials like mulch to promote composting. This is an important point. If you've ever composted before you know that the process is not automatic and takes some management to promote good composting — the same is true at a larger scale when it is bodies you are composting. Additionally some have the option to receive some of the resulting soil 8-12 weeks later, much as one does ashes after cremation. All of this costs money.
I just want a sky burial. When it's my time to go, throw me out like the trash I am. I hate how much even death costs these days. Nobody's death should financially ruin you.
This always confuses me. Embalming and cremation are forbidden in Judaism, is the end result not pretty much the same as composting? Maybe the difference is people taking home the result to use in the garden - we don't want a cholera outbreak.
Human composting is something that's available in my area. A friend used it for his kid, they do use the remains to start a tree that I think you can plant in your yard.
I'm from a Muslim community and we sort of skip 90% of the prep work and try to bury same day, wrapped in a sheet and under some planks and dirt. Even though I'm not a believer anymore, that's probably how I'd want to be handled.
But on the topic of compost vs burial, from passing knowledge, only really large trees can get down deep enough to benefit from those nutrients. Either way, it takes a decade for a body in a casket to decompose and the wood is a different story all together. My guess is it reduces to dirt over a century and rain washes the nutrients down into groundwater.
Composting a body basically makes that nutrients readily available. The place I'm staying now has trees planted in human ashes and compost. And it's all not even the old owners family, they just had a thing for it.
In unrelated news, garden veggies have always been amazing.
This company doesn't seem to let you keep the remains. I believe they use it to plant a forest in the pacific northwest.
My personal preference would be cremation, then compressing the results into a solid cube and shooting me into space on a "memorial rocket ride" but I dont think my family will spring for the $100 grand launch.
Failing that though, composting kinda makes sense. But its a little odd because it takes 8 to 12 weeks for the body to decompose and then remaining bones need to be pulverized into fine particles and implants and fillings removed. Sounds kinda violent compared to just resting in a coffin, not that the subject is around to witness bones being crushed.
But I do like the idea of being spread on the land I love. Im sure one of my dogs would love to mark the spot too.