Human Composting: doubts arise for modern agriculture

As we are writing about the importance of manure composting methods, news comes in about human composting, which has already been legalized in several American States. With one big difference: it is not composting the feces and urine of the human, but the whole dead body.

It is a billion dollar business called “natural organic reduction” in which the ability to market the product as an “environmentally friendly alternative” to burial and cremation points to "reduced environmental impact, is cheaper, greener and highlights the conscious urgency of the climate changes”. Basically, the corpse is laid on a bed of soil with herbs and petals placed in a containing structure (Bioreactor) and subjected to frenzied microbial activity (aerobiosis by oxygen adduction) to accelerate the decomposition of the dead, to be finally used to fertilize 30 sq. m. of soil.

The news raises immediate curiosity about the social phenomenon and the concept of sustainable development, falling within the case of environmental degradation and the price borne by the territory and paid with people's health. Roberto Saviano (Italian writer) has already commented on this regarding toxic waste managed with the “Illicit trafficking of waste” ... "One of the most impressive things is that sometimes organizations manage not only to hide toxic waste, but even to turn it into fertilizer to sell!"

According to the circular economy, is human composting a way to make legal what is illegal?
Will this kind of compost only end up in relatives' gardens, or will it end up in farm fields at a certain point?
Can the dead be considered a suitable matrix for producing fertilizer capable of preserving environmental balances, or does it take the form of contributing harmful and hazardous waste substances to the soil?

While it is true that the quality of the starting materials greatly influences the quality of the final compost, this human composting can be considered a practice of soil contamination and as such, capable of producing biological damage through pollutants such as heavy metals, non-biodegradable inert substances, pathogenic microorganisms and phytotoxic substances, etc., then carried to the body through food.

So, the “dear composted grandfather” could be a supporter of epigenetic adaptations for subsequent generations, or evidence of our resilience to the spread of human folly.

The scientific community is silent and, busy as it is between a transformative covid and Hippocrates, fails to look forward.

As far as the agronomic context is concerned, given that profit dominates everything and in light of the new figure, that of the “depollution technician”, we can imagine the evolution of the intervention plan for an innovative farm, with the number of corpses per hectare instead of kilograms of fertilizer. The count is simple: if one composted corpse can fertilize 30 sq. m. of soil, it takes 333 composted corpses to fertilize one hectare of farmland ...