The 'Urban Death Project' Wants to Turn You Into Soil

The 'Urban Death Project' Wants to Turn You Into Soil

While the "Urban Death Project" may sound like the title of Hollywood's latest horror film, it's something else entirely—though perhaps not less macabre.

It's a Seattle-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit that has a novel idea when it comes to making burials greener: composting human remains. It calls its system "Recomposition" and says it "transforms bodies into soil so that we can grow new life after we die."

The devaluation of the humans is reaching a new low. Sure, it all sounds fine and good until you really start thinking about it.

All our dead bodies thrown together in a big blender mixed with animal carcasses, entrails and poop to be 'transformed' into fertilizer? Really? That's just perfectly wretched.

Sounds like a huge chance to take also. I don't know anything about how it all comes down but what if you have someone with let's say AIDS who just happens to be fertilizing under your feet. What germs - microbes - whatever would the fertilization process let loose into the air, ground, etc? Maybe someone here will know.

The Seattle Times notes the project has run one experiment thus far involving wood chips and a 78-year-old woman's remains.

It's not approved but they did it anyway? I'd like to know how all that came about.

What I do know is Washington State University is the first of it's kind to build one of these processing plants. Right now they're making fertilizer out of dead animals, manure, entrails, etc. They say they're going to keep humans separate during the testing phase - but by that statement alone? You know we'll all be smooshed in with Fido and pig guts and poo sooner than later.

Nope, no green death for me.

Just one more step towards Soylent Green in my opinion.

Edit to Add: Before you run right over there to allow your body to be made into shat? The page staes:

Due to overwhelming interest, we are not currently enrolling participants in the pilot program at this time.

Why doesn't that surprise me. I mean, it's Seattle.

peace

Meh, better than be thrown into the Ganges anyways.

a reply to: silo13

I always felt the body way just a mass of meat, after you die it's just dead meat.
Grave yards are just a waste of space to me.

The question about safety? If I'd a thought about it a minute it's quite obvious.

Recomposition is based on the principles of livestock mortality composting, a process which creates heat which in turn kills common viruses and bacteria.

Research into mortality composting of livestock has found that the temperature inside the compost reaches 140 degrees Fahrenheit, which is high enough to kill off pathogens.

Farmers are using mortality composting in order to safely dispose of their dead livestock, as well as to control odor and runoff.

The Urban Death Project is fine tuning this process to be appropriate and meaningful for humans in an urban setting.

UDP

Mortality composting? That's just horrid. Even a perfect little politically correct name.

And 'recomposition'? Was that intentional or a spelling error?

I have a feeling it was intentional.

peace

a reply to: silo13

Because, being placed in a sealed coffin after the body has been embalmed is such a brilliant idea as well.

What we do with our dead is unnatural. I would probably prefer something along these lines for myself, as I have already opted for cremation.

Somehow I knew by the title, this was west coast based.

Then I read it was coming out of Seattle.

Seattle is almost as bad as San Francisco when it comes to "grand ideas".

501(c)(3)??

Typical liberal hogwash = "We want change the world without paying the price or doing ACTUAL research on the effects of the individual because our beliefs are all that matters."

Rinse, repeat, vomit..

a reply to: silo13

I will pass on having my loved ones bodies treated in this disrespectful manner.

originally posted by: Bluntone22
a reply to: silo13

I always felt the body way just a mass of meat, after you die it's just dead meat.
Grave yards are just a waste of space to me.

Speaks volumes to our connections to loved ones and the ability to let go.

IMO, graveyards are waystations for the LIVING to deal with the loss of loved ones. A personal memorial they can return to in order to cope with their loss and the inevitability of their own mortality.

Waste of space? That's like saying those that have passed were a waste of space as well.

You will not find that being the popular view on the matter.

It's Time !!

Soylent Green (1973) Trailer

a reply to: EternalShadow

I rather remember them as they were when they were alive that having a monument remembering their death, but for each their own.

originally posted by: Indigent
a reply to: EternalShadow

I rather remember them as they were when they were alive that having a monument remembering their death, but for each their own.

Fair enough.

a reply to: silo13


To be honest I keep telling the wife, that if I ever find out I am terminal, I am going to get a couple pounds of bacon drive to the woods, get naked and go looking for a bear.

Historically, the most fertile soils have come from decaying vegetable matter. Peat. Cow dung. Etc. I don't know why they should expect cremated flesh to improve them (though there may be something to be said for the minerals in bones).
Given that cremation is already an option, this extension of the idea does not seem worth the effort.

a reply to: silo13

You're 70 percent water. Water from millions, billions of other people long passed away. You drink them every day.

a reply to: [post=22719899]DISRAELI[/post

Wonder what kind of desieses can develop out of that?

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The funeral business is a huge money-making racket where even an inexpensive affair will set you back many thousands of dollars. If people want to avoid that industry then I can honestly see why.

a reply to: darepairman
Out of which? Decayed vegetable matter, or cremation? The fact that most farm soils include vegetable matter helps to answer the first question. How many diseases spread from plants to humans?

AFAICS the only difference between this scheme and regular burial is the speed at which you are reabsorbed by the environment. Or am I missing something?

(N.b., slightly tongue-in-cheek, but there is a serious point at the heart of it).

originally posted by: EternalShadow
[
IMO, graveyards are waystations for the LIVING to deal with the loss of loved ones. A personal memorial they can return to in order to cope with their loss and the inevitability of their own mortality.

Waste of space?

And who visits the grave once those people are also gone? No one, unless you're a dead celebrity or a taphophile finds your monument interesting.

a reply to: silo13

I'm in, but not if its for some industrialized int a bag of topsoil sort of noun.

Compost me when I die: The True Revolution.