From BBC – Science Focus:
In most of the world today, the choice of what happens to our remains after we die is a binary one – cremation or burial. But the funeral industry has a dirty secret: it’s terrible for the environment.
A single cremation uses the same amount of energy as an 800km (500-mile) car journey. In the US, where nearly two-thirds of people are cremated when they die, crematoria pump 360,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2 ) into the atmosphere every year. The bleak reality is that for most of us, irrespective of how we choose to live our lives, our last gesture on this planet will be a toxic one. “If you want your Mom to be a tree, the best way to do it is to just allow your Mom’s body to be placed in the ground and feed the ecosystem, ride the mycelium network,” says Phifer, referring to the vast underground web of fungal threads that underpins the health of forests, and lets plants and trees share nutrients and send out signals about threats.