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ENC 1102

30 March 2023

Research Proposal: What is the best way to die

Abstract

What should happen to me after I die, this a question that all people eventually ask themselves at

one point or other and it usually ends with either cremation or a funeral. This research paper

dives deep into why people choose these options and attempts to provide a better solution,

human composting. Using your loved ones as fertilizer instead of having a traditional funeral at

first sounds crazy but when taking a closer look at it it's actually not. While funerals remain the

societal norm, People should consider human composting over other forms of death rituals

because It is better for the environment, It is cheaper than a funeral, and it is a creative and

lasting way of honoring the dead. This is an important topic because people are dying every day

and which means every day someone is being burned or buried but now there is another option.

Many states are now legalizing human composting and allowing people to let their loved ones be

transitioned into the soil.

Background and Literature Review

First lets speak of what composting is, composting is the process of recycling organic

matter(organic matter being basically anything living or once living). When living things die
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bacteria and fungi will come along and decompose the matter. What is left over from this

decomposition is what we call soil. In the podcast Should We Compost Human Bodies the

speaker Wendy Zukerman explains that little bacterial microbes release chemicals that break

down whatever organic material there is and the bi-product of that is soil(Zukerman). In order for

these microbes to work they need an environment of heat moisture and oxygen, without

something like oxygen the material will undergo something called anaerobic decomposition

which is harmful to the environment because it releases carbon dioxide and methane into the

atmosphere. But with near-perfect conditions, the microbes will start to break down the material

extremely quickly, and that's what core composting is, creating an environment such that

microbes can quickly break down organic matter. Breaking down this matter puts nutrients back

into the soil, the Natural Resources Defense Council(NRDC) released an article titled

Composting 101 and it said that “Compost contains three primary nutrients needed by garden

crops: nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium…Instead of relying on synthetic fertilizers that

contain harmful chemicals, composting offers an organic alternative”(NRDC). Examples of

things that are normally composted are fruit and vegetable leftovers, food leftovers, eggshells,

teabags, and even sometimes newspaper. Composting 101 and Should We Compost Human

Bodies provided good background knowledge on composting and its effects. Now let's keep

talking about the environment and mention the effects that cremation and funerals have on it.

Typical funerals have the body in a casket and often times before they are put into the ground

they will open the casket so that people can see the body one last time. What a lot of people don’t

know is that there was a whole process to get that body there and looking like that. Before the

viewing, the body is pumped full of chemicals such as formaldehyde, phenol, and menthol which
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all are toxic to the environment. The article Why Conventional Burial Harms the Environment

by Milton Fields(company name) says that “It’s estimated that 800,000 gallons of formaldehyde

are placed in the ground each year due to conventional burials.”(Milton Fields). On top of

chemicals funerals also use a lot of materials such as wood. It is stated that “In just one year, the

amount of casket wood buried is equivalent to about 4 million acres of forest.” this is crazy,

people are chopping down millions of acres of land just to put the wood right back into the

ground. When looking at cremations it is often advertised as the more environmentally friendly

option but just because it's better than funerals doesn’t mean it's good. Our bodies are

carbon-based, which means that every part of our body is partly made up of carbon so when our

body is burned all that carbon is released as carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Clearly this is a

huge problem, also cremation requires fuel as well which is more pollutants in the air. The

National Geographic article The environmental toll of cremating the dead by Becky Little says

cremation“takes up about the same amount of energy and has the same emissions as about two

tanks of gas in an average car”(Little). These articles are good representations of how damaging

cremations and funerals can be for he environment.

Research questions

I have already talked about some questions such as what is composting, and are funerals and

cremations bad for the environment

1. Can human bodies be composted?

a. This was the basis of my research, it was already stated that composting is the

origin. The podcast Should We Compost Human Bodies talks about a strory
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where a farmer had chickens that got sick, so instead of throwing them away he

decided to compost them, this story sparked an idea in the head of a woman

named Katrina Spade, if farm animals can be composted than so can humans and

through testing, she was able to create a company that does just that (Zukerman).

2. Why do people choose funerals or cremations?

a. From our research, it has shown that most people choose to do cremations and

this is evident by the statistics from the statistics page of the Nationals funeral

director association where “ N FDA's 2021 Cremation and Burial Report, the

2021 cremation rate is projected to be 57.5% and the burial rate is projected to be

36.6% ”(NFDA). Then when looking at the prices it is clear to see why, when it

comes to a funeral and a cremation with a funeral ceremony the prices are very

similar with the average funeral being $7,848 but for just a cremation The

Philadelphia Cremation Association in the article Cremation vs. Burial: Why

People Choose One Over the Other they say that pure cremations can range from

$2500 down to $800(PCA).

3. Do people even care about the environment when it comes to death

a. This wasn’t a question i expected to get a direct answer from but from the

statistics page of the NFDA it says “According to NFDA’s 2022 Consumer

Awareness and Preferences Report, 60.5% would be interested in exploring

“green” funeral options because of their potential environmental benefits, cost

savings or for some other reason” This shows that there is clearly a market for

composting bodies and people want a cleaner way

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Conclusion

This research paper is dedicated to learning about human composting and presenting it as the

best option over funerals and cremation. People should greatly consider human composting over

other forms of death rituals because It is better for the environment, It is cheaper than a funeral,

and it is a creative and lasting way of honoring the dead.