The Death of the Traditional Burial System

admin — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 22:07:09 +0000

The only guarantees in life are death and taxes. Of the two, only one has direct ecological consequences: death. Over 150,000 people die each day, and there is only so much available space the world has to offer in which to bury them. So what’s the most environmentally friend thing to do with a dead body? Or as the great Shakespeare would say: to casket or not to casket?

There are several options: burying, cremation, freezing, “beetleization” etc., the list goes on. Most of you, I assume, have heard of the first three options, but unless you studied ecology at the University of Vermont, or google Bernd Heinrich obsessively, you are probably asking what beetleization is.

There is a breed of beetle called the sexton, or burying beetle. It’s a little critter, about the size of a bumble bee, and it can (and will, with the help of a mate) take that much bigger and very dead shrew and get it very quickly underground.

Heinrich explains how these beetles (they work in mom and pop teams) manage to find, lug and inter corpses many times their weight and size. Burial beetles are, says Professor Heinrich (who for years taught at the University of Vermont), “the undertakers of the small animals in the forest.”

So, with a few more beetles, it is possible to save some money on a mortician and a casket, and let nature run its course.

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The Death of the Traditional Burial System