Eco-Friendly Body Disposal Discovered

[matcom]

<snip>

RATHER than bury or burn bodies after death, a Swedish company has come up with a chilling alternative - freezing them in liquid nitrogen, then using soundwaves to smash the brittle remains into a powder.

Concerns about the environmental impact of cremation, where a body is incinerated at high temperature, and burial, in which a body can take many years to decompose, has led Swedish firm Promessa Organic AB to the new solution.

The process involves flash-freezing bodies to -18C, then dipping them in liquid nitrogen with a temperature of -196C. The bodies, extracted from the super-cold solution, are brittle as glass and broken down with bursts of sound to leave a powder substance.

From there, all water is removed in a vacuum chamber before the remains are moved through a metal screen that filters away any precious metals in fillings or remnants of pacemakers and other implants that may have survived the freezing process.

http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,8637604%255E13762,00.html

[GOPisEvil]

1. Cool!

:P:D

[ClintonTyree]

2. The Swedes..............

AGAIN on the cutting edge of technology.

[joefree1]

4. Hey, we're already doing it here

Moving on from life, naturally

finalpassages.org
A family prepares a casket.

Marco R. de la Cava
USA Today
Feb. 5, 2004 12:00 AM
Edit ...
Lyons, 56, runs Final Passages, a nonprofit concern an hour north of San Francisco that has helped more than 200 families conduct funerals of loved ones in their own homes.

No embalming. No funeral directors. No sticker shock.
Edit ...
In fact, some green funeral advocates want to do away with tombstone-studded cemeteries altogether.

Picture a woodland that is maintained but not manicured. Imagine headstones replaced by tree plantings or inscribed rocks. Welcome to Ramsey Creek Preserve outside Westminster, S.C.

Run by local doctor Billy Campbell, the 37-acre preserve is a prototype that he hopes to replicate across the United States. A passionate environmentalist, he took his lead from nature-loving Britain with its 200 green burial locations and created "a land conservation tool" that allows the eco-conscious living to preserve nature through death. Similar recently opened sites include the Glendale Memorial Nature Preserve in the Florida Panhandle and Ethician Family Cemetery in East Texas.

More ...
http://www.azcentral.com/ent/pop/articles/0205greenburial05.html

What's really cool about this concept is that by creating green cemetaries we also preserve natural habitat zones not easily invaded by urban sprawl.

[veganwitch]

5. can you do the eco burial if you donate organs?

provided any are still working when i die im donating all of them. do hospitals automatically cremate the remains after the removal process?

i would much rather be human compost.

[afraid_of_the_dark]

3. Wonder what the Pope thinks about that...

since the Church isn't too keen on cremation. Probably not too keen on this either, since it destroys the physical body.

Still, sounds cool.