Key Points
"It's [about] creating green spaces for wildlife, nice places for people to visit, planting new woodland at the same time and it's a positive legacy," Inman-Cook says.. But what of the not-so-natural materials that make their way into the human body pharmaceuticals, microplastics, heavy metals?.
She says that there is limited data on whether human bodies pollute the ground following a natural burial in a shallow grave..
In a lifecycle assessment conducted by Leiden University and Delft University of Technology, using data provided by Recompose, the climate impact of composting a body was found to be a fraction of that of cremation: 28kg (62lb) of CO2e compared to 208kg (459lb) CO2e in the US..
This prevents the anaerobic process that causes rotting, she says.. Turning a human body into soil also reminds us that "we're not adjacent to nature, we're part of nature," Spade says..
Rugg describes "guerilla gardening" taking place at one natural burial site, by a family member intent on surreptitiously marking their loved one's grave with distinctive clovers..
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