The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #97646   Message #1926261
Posted By: Paul Burke
04-Jan-07 - 03:53 AM
Thread Name: BS: Green Burial: How Do You Want to Go?
Subject: RE: BS: Green Burial: How Do You Want to Go?
What's wrong with cremation? You get turned into carbon dioxide (which came from the atmosphere in the first place), water vapour, oxides of sulphur and nitrogen (which soon wash back into the soil), and a residue largely of calcium, sodium, phosphorus, potassium etc which goes back into the soil when your ashes are scattered. It takes energy to burn you- so a green cremation should be on a wood fire. Every bit gets recycled except for the soul, which hopefully has departed by the time of the cremation.

It recycles much faster than burial (especially if enbalmed and sealed in a coffin) or getting etten by crows, which leaves the bones (calcium and potassium plus proteins) to decay over perhaps hundreds of years.

"And o'er his bones, when they are bare,
The wind shall blow for evermair.."