An enlightened and well-read reader from the Seattle, Washington area (Yes, they can read out there) has answered the question and about an alternative to burial and cremation for the disposal of our earthly remains: put the body in your compost bin with your food scraps, lawn clippings, and garden debris. But remember one part green to one part brown for layering.

First of all, do you have a compost bin? Explaining composting as a method of corpse disposal is going to be hard for those who don’t compost. For those who do, imagine a big compost “bin” the size of a average warehouse. Put the body in there, and with proper ventilation, and tending you’ll have compost material in 8 to 12 weeks. As composters know, there are many variables which speed up or slow down the process. For reference: a body buried–without a coffin–will take 5 years to “skeletonize”, but takes up to a decade to fully decompose. That’s ten years underground without a coffin.

For those who don’t compost: google it. Not enough room here to explain.

Body composting has been happening for many years, already. There are, now, several companies offering to help with climate controlled warehouses to speed things up and guarantee results

I’ve lost myself in this research so here are some fun facts to end this column for today:

1. The body will compost into about one cubic yard of material to be used in any garden, legally, if you do all your paperwork.
2. Teeth and bones DO NOT compost and they must be screened out of the material or ground up and added back in to the material. Unless you want them for something else. Necklace?
3. The Catholic Church is against composting, calling it “dehumanizing”. Hm. Kettle/pot thing comes to mind. Wonder what Catholic cavemen did with their dead…

Composting food waste, garden clippings, and organic waste is great for the environment. Your garbage turns into gardening material, not a methane-producing lump buried underground. And its energy efficient. No gas fired furnace for cremation, or diesel grave digging machines. (Does any cemetery still dig graves by hand?) Also, maybe in the future there will be DIY Body Composting areas? Or kits available at Lowes?

I’m all for composting my (currently) producing methane lump, when my methane producing is halted and it’s time to sail off to heaven, or someplace similar.

Take my organs and put the rest in the bin.