When you die, you can take it with you, if what you want to take is reducing your carbon footprint. Although you might think that your responsibility to the environment stops when you bite the big one, think again. The dead are not proving to be environmentally responsible. However, there's hope that this will change, hopefully before you kick the bucket.
Rule, Britannia
The problem of what to do with the dead is especially problematic when you live on an island. Great Britain is currently experiencing a housing crisis for the dead. Cemeteries for traditional burials are quickly moving to the "no longer an option" category. In North Hampton, the cemetery there filled to capacity just this past April. Over half of the Greater London area graveyards are filled.
Great Britain's dead also need to cut down on carbon emissions. Smoke from crematoria is thought to contribute about 16% of the UK's mercury emissions. The mercury is coming from the corpses' dental work. One option is to remove all dental work from the bodies before they go into the flames. Another is to only have group burnings to save on the amount of smoke produced from the chimneys.
Where'd Everybody Go?
The UK and the US are both considering opening up a new way to bury corpses - in acid that would dissolve them. This is technically called "resomation". Learn this word; you'll be hearing a lot more about it in the future.
Resomation was originally used for getting rid of diseased livestock in the 1990's. And then someone realized that what could work for dead cows could also work for dead people. I wonder how they made that realization. Perhaps someone was trying to think of the perfect crime? Anyway, resomation works very much like cremation, except that instead of committing the body to the flames, it's commit to a vat of an alkaline solution of potash lye.
The result is an ash-like powder very similar to what is produced by cremation. This can be placed in an urn, mixed in with fireworks or shot up into space. You could also have your ashes interred into architecture. That certainly gives the phrase "house of the dead" a new meaning.
Further Reading:
As for me, I just want to be buried. Worm and tree food, people :-)
(If necessary, take my filled teeth out first!)
Written in August