I recently watched a documentary where I saw footage of a sperm whale, just
having given up the ghost of its 70 year life, gracefully sinking to the inky
bottom. While the Richard Attenborough-like narrator described how the great
body would become fish food for a year, it dawned on me that I can’t think of a
better way to go.
I’ve a pal up in the
north of Malaysia who owns a fleet of fishing boats. Though he’s okay with
weighting me down it’s the red tape that’ll keep me on land.[1]
Red tape and current attitudes to death, of course.
Did you know that Canada
cremates 165,000 bodies each year, which comes to 66% of all their deceased? Massive
China dwarfs that figure with 4.7 million cremations per annum (50% of their
dead). France records 200,000 cremations (34% and rising), Germany 470,000 (55%),
Japan 1.3 million (99%, understandable at 350 people per sq/km), South Korea
205,000 (77%), Thailand 351,000 (80%), the UK 436,000 (75%), and the USA 1,2
million (46%).[2]
That’s a lot of fire, stink[3]
and smoke.
Research in South
Australia suggests that a conventional burial creates 39kgs of carbon while
cremation creates 160kgs. Plus there’s the complicated and expensive refractory
oven materials required to withstand temperatures of 900°C,[4] and the fuel to make all these thousands of
fires per day go. The situation is so serious it prompted researcher Lisa
Friedman to ask ‘could South Asia be contributing to climate change in death as
well as in life?’[5]
Seven million people
are burned every year on pyres typically constructed of 550 kilograms of wood plus
a few kilograms of biological and synthetic materials including cow dung, rice
grains, vermilion powder, camphor and clarified butter. Together these are responsible
for a large chunk of light-absorbing aerosol known as brown carbon.
A corpse takes as much
as six hours to burn away. Researchers Chakrabarty and Pervez found that the
emissions from funeral pyres were the equivalent of about 23 percent of the
total carbonaceous aerosol mass produced by the burning of fossil fuels, and 10
percent of the emissions produced by biofuels in India.[6]
Significant were the high levels of black carbon, a substance now ranked as ‘the
second-largest man-made contributor to global warming’.[7]
‘If you stop this, you
will be doing a lot for the environment’ noted Prof Chakrabarty.[8]
It doesn’t have to be
this way.
In the UK there are
now about 200 woodland burial sites offering families an alternative to
cemeteries or crematoria. These sites are left unmarked or instead are marked
by the planting of a tree or wild flowers. Any coffin used must be made from a
fully biodegradable material such as cardboard or wicker, or even a cloth or
drape.[9]
Sandy Sullivan
invented and markets body disposal by Resomation,[10]
a process in which water and an alkali base reduce the body to ash and recyclable water in roughly the same time it takes to conventionally cremate.
Italian company
Capsula Mundi (and others) now offer a burial pod. Here a body is secreted
inside the roots of a tree to be, providing food for the sapling as it slowly
grows tall.[11] The
Promessa process, for me the Ferrari to take us back into star dust, is a
technique to freeze-dry bodies, making (says inventor and biologist Sussane
Wiigh-Masak) a perfect compost.[12]
The idea of recycling
ourselves isn’t new. Tibetans and Zoroastrians (Iran mainly) have always
believed the body should be put to good use; in days past some would feed their
dead to the birds of prey.
These are serious
times for our wonderful and delicate planet. Thinking of new ways to bury is
one way to help reverse climate change, and the right kind of thinking to take
us into a bold new future. At present it’s tradition and religion that turns
the natural and inevitable end of one’s life into an event strangled by dogma. It’s
time to put our thinking caps on.
Within the next 30
years we need 10 billion acres planted with 200 trees each, a certainty for
humanity’s continued survival.[13]
I understand that getting a burial at sea might be a touch complicated. No
worries. I’d be happy to take my last sleep in the roots of a tree, thanking my
host for the oxygen I was gifted during my lifetime. I’m not the fussy type. I
don’t have to be in a park, a sidewalk shade tree is a grand partner for me.
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[1] ‘…just 50 or so
non-navy sea burials are granted each year’ in the UK … http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2005/oct/18/ethicalmoney.climatechange
[3] ‘Businesses in the
area have laid numerous complaints about a stomach-churning stench from the
site’ …
http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/cape-town-crematorium-causing-a-big-stink
[5] ‘A burning question: the climate impact of 7 million funeral pyres
in India and Nepal’ … by Lisa Friedman http://www.eenews.net/stories/1059989543
