The display of shrunken heads is a major draw for many a child visiting the Pitt-Rivers Museum in Oxford. This quirky collection hides through an arch in the back wall of the the Natural History Museum, as though through Alice’s looking-glass, leading you into a dark, high-ceilinged gallery. Somewhere in the middle of the room, surrounded by an assortment of carefully arranged Maori charms, witches in bottles, modern surgical implements and Colgate toothbrushes, there is a cabinet labelled ‘Treatment of the Dead’. Here you will find explanations and examples of the myriad methods we humans have devised to dispose of each other.
Of course, when I talk about disposal, I’m not counting mafia murders, accidents, maulings and maybe the odd billionaire wanting to be shot into the sun or scattered over the rings of Saturn. I’m talking about the rest of us – whatever we think of as normal. The millions. The masses. All those corpses that have to be dealt with somehow so that they won’t rise again spread disease.
Right then. So in these days of carbon footprints, Corporate Social Responsibility, Green Deals, EPCs and the EU ETS, how do our mortuary practices fare environmentally? The answer is: pitifully badly. It’s mostly true that when someone dies they stop consuming resources – but, thanks to tradition, they certainly don’t stop having an environmental impact. Having pursued a lifelong vendetta against nature, we each give it one final punch in the face when we go. Thankfully, however, some people are beginning to challenge the status quo.
“Sustainability just doesn’t seem like an important item on the agenda when dear uncle Joe’s just popped his clogs”
In the developed world, we don’t like to think about death. Personally I find this odd because, like sex, it’s a fact of life. Still, despite a real fascination with death and mortality, evident in every murder mystery novel, Scream movie, Bodyworlds exhibition, the shrunken heads in the Pitt-Rivers – despite all this, death is a taboo in polite circles. This means it’s hard to improve ingrained practices that may be damaging the environment. Part of this is down to a sort of principal-agent problem, and the fact that, for most people, sustainability just doesn’t seem like an important item on the agenda when dear uncle Joe’s just popped his clogs. While I’m sure there are family members who would love nothing more than to leaf through a catalogue of coffin designs at that point, many such decisions tend to be left to undertakers. Nevertheless, as I say, there is hope.
With this in mind, let’s begin with a quick survey of the most common practices in use today, and I’ll try to explain why they’re so abysmally bad for the environment.
1. Burial
People have been burying the dead for at least 200,000 because it’s an easy, cheap and effective way to prevent the spread of disease in most climates. It also happens to be a good, albeit slow, way to have much of the substance of your body return to the ecosystem. This gives a sense of poetic closure, and a nod toward the circularity of life. Aside from providing a convenient site to act as a focus for any subsequent grieving/worship/desecration, this to me is the whole point of burial. When you are buried, you return to the earth. Dust to dust. No pollutants, no particulates. You get eaten up and donate your very atoms back to the earth.
Except, as we’ll see, there are some problems with that.
First of all: conventional Western burial practices are pretty preposterous, and poisonous to boot.
Soon after death, the body is embalmed, often using formaldehyde. This is toxic, halting decay for many years, but hey, we need their face to look pretty for the next couple of days. In the most dignified way possible, the body is dolled up, dressed up and put in box. It may or may not be put on display, before being lowered into the ground, covered with soil and turf, and a hefty headstone placed nearby so you’ll know where to direct your tears and bouquets in future.
So then: a wooden box. But wood is a natural material, right? It’s biodegradable. Well, no. Not when it’s three inches thick, made of a hardwood like oak, and has metal braces reinforcing it. Even above ground, felled oak takes decades to rot. Below the surface where there’s no oxygen it’s going to take a century or more before the worms can get you. Not to mention the fact that coffin production consumes some 70,000 cubic metres of hardwoods annually, and that’s just in the USA. The coffins themselves are usually impermeable to insects, and sometimes to air – which of course slows down decay.
Oh, and there’s another thing. Very often – I had no idea just how often until I looked into it – the coffin itself is placed inside a reinforced concrete box. This is a legal requirement in some US states – I couldn’t find out exactly why. Presumably these areas are prone to zombie outbreak or something. Fortunately the National Concrete Burial Vault Association offers a heavy-duty concrete burial vault with an ‘environmentally responsible plastic inner lining’. Er… OK.
“If the Almighty wants to resurrect you, surely his omnipotence can piece you back together whatever state you’re in”
Several American friends of mine tell me this preservative obsession comes from a fear of death, and a desire to achieve immortality. I have to wonder: how do you expect to achieve immortality after you’re dead? Perhaps it’s something religious – but if the Almighty wants to resurrect you, surely his omnipotence can piece you back together whatever state you’re in. It’s not like you’re more likely to be let into heaven just because you’ve turned slightly less mushy than your neighbours.
Interest in sustainable and natural burials has been on the up. Coffins can be made of materials that allow for rapid decomposition. You can choose from heavy-duty recycled cardboard, banana leaves, bamboo, seagrass, water hyacinth and many more. English willow seems a stylish choice, albeit a little like a squeaky picnic hamper. I’d much rather have one of these funky Ecopods, please, in black. With blue trim.
Of course, the most sustainable option is to use no coffin at all. However, this suggestion would probably induce a ‘coffin fit’ amongst funeral directors… Ha! Ahem.
Finally, on the topic of burial, there is the question of what to do with all the poisons that are in us. Throughout our lives, our bodies become the repository of chemicals and metal ions locked deep within our tissues that then leach out and can poison the soil once we start to decompose. Jae-Rhim Lee and the Infinity Burial Project propose to deal with this problem using novel cultures of mushrooms called ‘decompicultures’. The idea is that you can feed mushrooms your own discarded tissue – hair, nail clippings, skin cells – and over time you will automatically selectively breed mushrooms that like eating you. After death you will be placed in a ‘mushroom death suit’ that has been impregnated with spores of your own decompiculture, which will then break down your tissues quickly and safely. So far I haven’t seen more than that one TED talk from Ms. Lee and the IBP, but I look forward watching this weird and wonderful idea develop.
2. Cremation
If you don’t like the sound of being eaten by invertebrates, you can have yourself cremated. The ceremonial burning of a body is practiced as a norm in many cultures, but the Vikings did it best by far – flaming pyre on a boat, pushed out to sea – though in this case it’s vitally important to do a risk assessment and make sure the tide and the wind aren’t coming onshore.
Modern cremation has the advantage that any human body is more or less instantly transformed into a phosphate-rich fertiliser, ready to be sprinkled on your favourite rose bed, vegetable patch or children’s playground paddling pool. It’s also a lot cheaper to transport a bunch of dry ashes than a full corpse (which is good for those wanting to be put into orbit).
None of this makes cremation an environmentally-responsible option, though. The process tends to require temperatures in excess of 700C for over an hour, and the energy for this usually comes from fossil fuels. Moreover, tooth fillings and small implants are not removed beforehand, and this can result in air pollution when they are vaporised. Hip implants and pacemakers can also present interesting hiccups in the process.
An enterprising Scot by name of Sandy Sullivan has invented a sort of ‘liquid cremation’. In his ‘resomation’ process, the body is emulsified under high pressure at a mere 300C. To me, this process sounds a bit too slushy and industrial to catch on, but you never know.
3. Sustainable options
It looks very much as though certain forms of ‘natural burial’ offer the most responsible, conscientious options. The use of refrigeration instead of embalming fluid, sustainable materials for coffins and a low overall energy input makes this format cheaper for people as well as for the environment overall. The first woodland burial ground was created in the UK in 1993, and has strict rules about the kinds of burials that can take place there. The Association of Natural Burial Grounds in the UK and the Green Burial Council in the USA maintain certification systems for natural burial grounds.
While there are many options in this area, some more sustainable than others, the beliefs that people hold and the choices they make during their lives should be respected after they are dead. Speaking for myself, I don’t think I’m going to be needing my body after I die, and the best thing it can do at that point will be to decay as fast as possible. I don’t believe in making a vain attempt at immortality. At least I’d have some continued use as plant food.
That said, I’ve heard that Pitt Rivers may be about to give back those shrunken heads to their unfortunate owners’ South American descendants. I wonder if they’d ever be interested in having a more local replacement…
Further information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_burial
http://www.naturaldeath.org.uk/
EarthmanSam 