Why don't we just compost the dead?

This way we could grow new life after we die, and our survivors could plant a tree using some of our soil

(Getty)

For those of us who aren't religious, formal burial is difficult to justify.

Urban cemeteries are becoming increasingly overcrowded, with their graves quite inefficiently evenly-spaced in reverence of a sort of death equivalent of personal space.

They serve little to no purpose and certainly contribute no good, other than to provide surviving family members with a place to grieve and remember - something which there would still be room for in a different system.

This all sounds very cold and ruthless, but it's really quite the opposite. More and more people are signing up for organ donation, recognising that our organs are better employed helping others after they're dead, so why not extend to this logic to our bodies themselves?

Katrina Spade, a 37-year-old architect in Seattle, is trying to facilitate this with the Urban Death Project, setting up a human composting site.

A mock-up of 'The Core' system (Picture: Urban Death Project)

"Composting makes people think of banana peels and coffee grounds," Spade told The New York Times. But "our bodies have nutrients. What if we could grow new life after we’ve died?"

She has the backing of several environmental scientists, and testing is already underway on a 78-year-old woman recently buried in wood chips in order for the composting process to begin.

Once fully composted (the bones take a lot longer), it has been estimated that one human would yield a three-foot cube of compost.

Mourners would carry their loved ones to a 'laying in' ceremony

Spade's system does not omit the ritual of a burial ceremony either, with the idea being that mourners carry the dead in shrouds up to a three-storey vault called "the core", where, during a "laying in" ceremony they are buried, filtering down the core over the following few weeks until the first stage of decomposition is complete.

Once the person has fully composted, survivors would be able to collect some of the resultant soil to take home for use in their garden or whether they wish.

Would a tree, blossoming year-on-year, not be a more fulfilling tribute than a gravestone?