-
When I die,
-
I would like for my body
to be laid out to be eaten by animals.
-
Having your body laid out to be
eaten by animals is not for everyone.
-
Maybe you have already had
the end-of-life talk with your family,
-
and decided on --
-
I don't know --
-
cremation.
-
And in the interest of full disclosure,
-
what I am proposing for my dead body
is not strictly legal at the moment,
-
but it's not without precedent.
-
We've been laying out our dead
for all of human history;
-
it's call exposure burial.
-
In fact, it's likely happening
right now as we speak.
-
In the mountainous regions of Tibet,
-
they practice sky burial,
-
a ritual where the body is left
to be consumed by vultures.
-
In Mumbai,
-
in India,
-
those who follow the Parsee religion
-
put their dead in structures
called Towers of Silence.
-
These are interesting cultural tidbits,
-
but they just haven't really been
that popular in the Western world --
-
they're not what you'd expect.
-
In America,
-
our death traditions have come to be
-
chemical embalming followed by
burial at your local cemetery,
-
or more recently, cremation.
-
I myself, am a recent vegetarian,
-
which means I spent the first
30 years or so of my life
-
frantically inhaling animals --
-
as many as I could get my hands on.
-
Why, when I die, should they not
have their turn with me?
-
(Laughter)
-
Am I not an animal?
-
Biologically speaking,
-
are we not all, in this room, animals?
-
Accepting the fact that we are animals
-
has some potentially
terrifying consequences.
-
It means accepting that we
are doomed to decay and die,
-
just like creature on Earth.
-
For the last nine years,
-
I've worked in the funeral industry.
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First as a crematory operator,
-
then as a mortician,
-
and most recently as the owner
of my own funeral home.
-
And I have some good news:
-
if you're looking to avoid the whole
"doomed to decay and die" thing,
-
you will have all the help
in the world in that avoidance
-
from the funeral industry.
-
It's a multi-billion-dollar industry,
-
and its economic model
is based on the principle
-
of protection, sanitation
and beautification of the corpse.
-
Whether they mean to or not,
-
the funeral industry promotes
this idea of human exceptionalism.
-
It doesn't matter what it takes,
-
how much it costs,
-
how bad it is for the environment --
-
we're going to do it because
humans are worth it.
-
It ignores the fact that death can be
an emotionally messy and complex affair,
-
and that there is beauty in decay --
-
beauty in the natural return
to the Earth from whence we came.
-
I don't want you to get me wrong --
-
I absolutely understand
the importance of ritual,
-
especially when it comes
to the people that we love.
-
But we have to be able to create
and practice this ritual
-
without harming the environment,
-
which is why we need new options.
-
So, let's return to the idea
-
of protection, sanitation
and beautification.
-
We'll start with a dead body.
-
The funeral industry
will protect your dead body
-
by offering to sell your family a casket
made of hardwood or metal
-
with rubber sealant.
-
At the cemetery,
-
on the day of burial,
-
that casket will be lowered
into a large concrete or metal vault.
-
We're wasting all of these resources --
-
concretes, metal, hardwoods --
-
hiding them in vast,
underground fortresses.
-
When you choose burial at the cemetery,
-
your dead body is not coming anywhere
near the dirt that surrounds it.
-
Food for worms --
-
you are not.
-
Next, the industry will sanitize
your body through embalming:
-
the chemical preservation of the dead.
-
This procedure drains your blood,
-
and replaces it with a toxic,
cancer-causing formaldehyde.
-
They say the do this for the public health
-
because the dead body can be dangerous,
-
but the doctors in this room will tell you
-
that that claim would only apply
-
if the person had died of some wildly
infectious disease, like Ebola.
-
Even human decomposition,
-
which let's be honest,
-
is a little stinky and unpleasant,
-
is perfectly safe.
-
The bacteria that causes disease
-
is not the same bacteria
that causes decomposition.
-
Finally, the industry
will beautify the corpse.
-
They'll tell you that the natural
dead body of your mother or father
-
is not good enough as it is.
-
They'll put it in makeup;
-
they'll put it in a suit.
-
They'll inject dyes so the person
looks a little more alive --
-
just resting.
-
Embalming is a cheat code
-
providing the illusion that death
and then decay are not the natural end
-
for all organic life on this planet.
-
Now, if this system of beautification,
sanitation, protection
-
doesn't appeal to you,
-
you are not alone.
-
There is a whole wave of people --
-
funeral directors, designers,
environmentalists --
-
trying to come up with a more
eco-friendly way of death.
-
For these people,
-
death is not necessarily a pristine,
-
makeup, powder-blue tuxedo kind of affair.
-
There's no question
-
that our current methods of death
are not particularly sustainable,
-
what with the waste of resources
and our reliance on chemicals.
-
Even cremation,
-
which is usually considered
the environmentally-friendly option,
-
uses, per cremation,
-
the natural gas equivalent
of a 500-mile car trip.
-
So, where do we go from here?
-
Last summer I was in the mountains
of North Carolina,
-
hauling buckets of wood chips
in the summer sun.
-
I was at Western Carolina University
at their "Body Farm,"
-
more accurately called a human
decomposition facility.
-
Bodies donated to science
are brought here,
-
and their decay is studied to benefit
the future of forensics.
-
On this particular day,
-
there were 12 bodies laid out
in various stages of decomposition.
-
Some were skeletonized,
-
one was wearing purple pajamas,
-
one still had blonde facial hair visible.
-
The forensic aspect is really fascinating,
-
but not actually why I was there.
-
I was there because a colleague of mine,
-
named Katrina Spade,
-
is attempting to create a system
not of cremating the dead,
-
but composting the dead.
-
She calls the system Recomposition,
-
and we've been doing it with cattle
and other livestock for years.
-
She imagines a facility where the family
could come and lay their dead loved one
-
in a nutrient-rich mixture that would,
-
in four-to-six weeks,
-
reduce the body --
-
bones and all --
-
to soil.
-
In those four-to-six weeks,
-
your molecules become other molecules;
-
you literally transform.
-
How would this fit in with the very recent
desire a lot of people seem to have
-
to be buried under a tree,
-
or to become a tree when they die?
-
In a traditional cremation,
-
the ashes that left over --
-
inorganic bone fragments --
-
form a thick chalky layer
-
that unless distributed
in the soil just right,
-
can actually hurt or kill the tree.
-
But if you're recomposed,
-
if you actually become the soil,
-
you can nourish the tree,
-
and become the post-mortem contributor
you've always wanted to be --
-
that you desreve to be.
-
So that's one option
for the future of cremation.
-
But what about the future of cemeteries?
-
There are a lot of people who think
we shouldn't even have cemeteries anymore
-
because we're running out of land,
-
but what if we re-framed it,
-
and the corpse wasn't the land's enemy,
-
but its potential savior?
-
I'm talking about conservation burial,
-
where large swaths of land
are purchased by a land trust.
-
The beauty of this is that once you plant
a few dead bodies in that land,
-
it can't be touched --
-
it can't be developed on,
-
hence the term,
-
conservation burial.
-
It's the equivalent of chaining yourself
to a tree post-mortem --
-
"Hell no, I won't go --
-
no really, I can't,
I'm decomposing under here."
-
Any money that the family gives
to the cemetery
-
would go back into protecting
and managing the land.
-
There are no headstones
and no graves in the typical sense.
-
The graces are scattered
about the propterty
-
under elegant mounds,
-
marked only by a rock
or a small metal disc,
-
or sometimes only locatable by GPS.
-
There's no embalming,
-
no heavy, metal caskets.
-
My funeral home sells a few caskets
-
made out of things like
woven willow and bamboo,
-
but honestly, most of our families
just choose a simple shroud.
-
There are none of the big vaults
that most cemeteries require
-
just because it makes it easier
for them landscape.
-
Families can come here;
-
they can luxuriate in nature;
-
they can even plant on a tree or a shrub,
-
though only native plants
to the are are allowed.
-
The dead then blend seamlessly
in with the landscape.
-
There's hope in conservation cemeteries.
-
They offer dedicated green space
in both urban and rural areas.
-
They offer a chance to reintroduce
native plants and animals to a region.
-
They offer public trails,
-
places for spiritual practice,
-
places for classes and events --
-
places where nature and mourning meet.
-
Most importantly,
-
they offer us once again,
-
a change to just decompose
in a hole in the ground.
-
The soil --
-
let me tell you --
-
has missed us.
-
I think for a lot of people,
-
they're starting to get the sense
-
that our current funeral industry
isn't really working for them.
-
For many of us,
-
being sanitized and beautified
just doesn't reflect us.
-
It doesn't reflect what we
stood for in our lives.
-
Will changing the way we bury
our dead solve climate change?
-
No.
-
But it will make bold moves
-
in how we see ourselves
as citizens on this planet.
-
If we can die in a way that is more
humble and self-aware,
-
I believe that we stand a chance.
-
Thank you.
-
(Applause)