For related articles and more information, please visit OCA’s Organic Transitions page, Environment and Climate page.

Regarding conventional burial as a drain on natural resources, a Swedish entrepreneur has come up with the concept of ‘living soil’ – a 100 per cent ecological demise.

WHEN SWEDISH eco-minded entrepreneur Susanne Wiigh-Mäsak departs this life, she will be turned into compost to help grow a shrub she has already selected . “It is the Rhododendron Cunningham White, a delicate pink shade when it opens, later turning white. I can think of no better way to continue the circle of life than to return to the soil and nurture it,” she says.

To achieve what she describes as a 100 per cent ecological demise – the official name she has given the process is “promession” – the ecologist and biologist has spent decades developing a unique system of recycling human bodies as fertiliser, yet respecting the memory of the deceased and sensibilities of mourners.

This ecological alternative to cremation or conventional burial involves freezing the body to minus 18 degrees before being submerged in liquid nitrogen. The then very brittle corpse is turned into a fine powder by a short vibration of specific amplitude, removing the 70 per cent water component from the remains by so-called freeze drying followed by burial in a biodegradable box made from corn starch in a shallow grave.

The entire treatment is a closed and individual process and once the corpse in “the ceremony coffin” is placed in the “promator” machine, human hands do not handle the remains again.

“The living soil,” the inventor explains, “turns it into compost in about six to 12 months. The compost formed is taken up by the plant continuing the ecological cycle of which every living thing is part. That shrub or tree will then stand as a symbol of the person.