Talk:Ecological funeral

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[edit] Needs a Rewrite

I seriously doubt the real ecological friendliness of this method of funeral, for one thing why would it be necessary to freeze the body in Liquid Nitrogen? Surely it would be realized that that amount of liquid nitrogen would be extremely environmentally destructive and energy consuming to produce, how is that environmentally friendly? It sounds like a good way for a company to get money out of some gullible environmentalists. Surely a much more Eco-Friendly and much less costly way of disposing of a body would be to simply let it decompose naturally, i.e. let it be buried and eaten by Worms and Bacteria. I can understand the removal of Toxic chemicals from the body but surely the process described if overkill, I would suspect that with all the above the process would generate more C02 than a normal burial. Finally this article sounds like it was written by the people who "invented" this method, and the links to the company seem to further imply this, it needs to be rewritten with a NPOV. --Hibernian 07:12, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

P.S. I've added a Non-NPOV template to this article, someone should review it and rewrite accordingly. --Hibernian 10:58, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

It does read a bit like a promotional piece, written at least by someone who approves of the method, whether or not they have a business connection to it. But do you have any hard data on negative aspects of it -- the effects of liquid nitrogen, and so on? Without that, about all that can be done in the way of a rewrite would be to tone down the approving language.

Miss Lynx 17:44, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

"for one thing why would it be necessary to freeze the body in Liquid Nitrogen?" So it will shatter when vibrated. The aim is to reduce the body to a dry powder. I've read (in New Scientist if I recall correctly) that plants love the stuff.

Nitrogen is a common element of the atmosphere. When it evaporates, it combines into N2 molecules and resumes its natural place as a component of air. They also dry out the remains before burial, so most of the nitrogen and water would be gone before you went in the ground. How does the saying go, that without water, we are nothing but a few dollars' worth of chemicals? MFNickster 07:22, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't think Hibernian was questioning the effects of nitrogen on the environment, but the production of that quantity of liquid nitrogen's effect on the environment. --saisugoi 13:45, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Indeed I was not questioning weather Nitrogen is harmful to the Environment, obviously it isn't, I am however questioning why it is necessary, in a so called ecological funeral, to use all these Industrial Processes, which would be harmful to the environment (such as creating and using Liquid Nitrogen and this "Vibrating" thing to). Can anyone tell me what the Carbon footprint of this Method is? I would bet it is significantly larger than a normal burial.

--Hibernian 07:54, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Commercial liquid nitrogen is produced by the fractional distillation of liquid air. xygen, argon, krypton, neon, and xenon are produced by the same process. Commercial demand of oxygen (both gaseous and liquid) is huge, so liquid nitrogen is really just a byproduct. The cost of liquid nitrogen (about $0.30/gal IIRC) is mostly in transportation and depends on how close you are to a liquid air plant. Refrigerating all that nitrogen until use does take energy, but it also takes a lot of energy and wood to make a modern coffin. Homo stannous 02:15, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Furthermore, the article states that the purpose of turning the body to dust is to permit aerobic decomposition rather than anaerobic decomposition. I don't know how much that helps (I've heard elsewhere that aerobic decomposition is dominant only in the top 6" of soil), but anaerobic decomposition produces methane, which is a much worse greenhouse gas than CO2. I suspect that the only reason why they dry the body afterward is to keep the coffin from getting soggy. Homo stannous 15:40, 4 April 2006 (UTC)