Last week, I took a look at interesting things technology can do with your remains once you're too dead to care. This week I'm going to follow up with a slightly different set of post-mortem services. These are companies that claim to make your death as eco-friendly as possible.
Now, I always assumed that dying is already one of the nicest things you can do for the environment. Dead people rarely drive Humvees. They don't purchase individually wrapped cheese slices. They probably use more than their fair share of air conditioning for the first couple days, but after that it's green all the way, baby.
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Well, apparently corpses just aren't carbon-neutral enough, because a bunch of people are willing to take money from your estate to make sure that your remains are more environmentally friendly than a hand-assembled hemp chicken tractor.
Here are some of their brightest ideas.
Apparently when Luca Brasi went to sleep with the fishes, he was proving himself one eco-friendly mafioso. The Neptune Society will happily provide your ashes with a set of concrete galoshes by interring them in an artificial reef off the Miami coast. The reef in question is a neoclassical affair with arches and lions and butterfly thingies, giving the overall impression that a senior prom sank slowly beneath the waves, the cover band solemnly playing "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)" with corsages and rented bow ties floating around their knees. So that's pretty cool.
This is pretty straightforward. Your unembalmed body gets interred in a biodegradable casket or shroud in a pesticide-free area planted with native flora. A few centuries ago this was just called "burial," but now we need a special word for it. The modern innovation I most appreciate is that many natural cemeteries provide GPS coordinates in lieu of a gravestone, allowing you to pay your respects via Google Earth. Personally, I'm willing to go one step further and be buried in a cemetery that lets the coyotes and vultures have at me. What could be more eco-friendly than a scavenger buffet?
Even if you want to be buried in a traditional cemetery with stone angels, immaculate lawns and drunken goth teenagers, you can reduce your carbon death mask by being buried in a coffin made of post-consumer recycled material. (Particularly apt, given that you're a post-consumer.) There are a lot of options here but my favorite is the Ecopod, a recycled newspaper coffin that looks like something Steve Jobs would crawl into, only to emerge later as a huge luna moth.
If you can put off dying for another year or two, you might be able to get in on the next big thing in Gaia-approved post-breathing services, a patented process called "promession." Remember the one interesting day in junior high science class when the teacher brought in a canister of liquid nitrogen and proceeded to shatter a rose like safety glass? With promession, you are that rose. Rather than burning your body to ashes, this process freeze-dries you into person dust. Once powdered, you can decompose as you've never decomposed before, providing life-giving nutrients to a shrub or, if you're feeling impish, some poison ivy.
Like promession, Resomation is a new, science-infused process designed to emulate cremation without having to fire up the grill. According to the site, Resomation is basically decomposition on fast-forward, accomplished with chemicals rather than larvae and bacteria. I'm not sure the larvae and bacteria would consider it an improvement, but at least it doesn't release harmful, Earth-choking emissions. Another listed benefit: "You can use it immediately first thing in the morning." Now your surviving loved ones don't have to miss yoga class!
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Born helpless, nude and unable to provide for himself, Lore Sjöberg eventually overcame these handicaps to become a revenant, a reveler and a reverend.
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