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Research Proposal 1
Research Proposal 1
ENC 1102
30 March 2023
Abstract
What should happen to me after I die, this a question that all people eventually ask themselves at
one point or other and it usually ends with either cremation or a funeral. This research paper
dives deep into why people choose these options and attempts to provide a better solution,
human composting. Using your loved ones as fertilizer instead of having a traditional funeral at
first sounds crazy but when taking a closer look at it it's actually not. While funerals remain the
societal norm, People should consider human composting over other forms of death rituals
because It is better for the environment, It is cheaper than a funeral, and it is a creative and
lasting way of honoring the dead. This is an important topic because people are dying every day
and which means every day someone is being burned or buried but now there is another option.
Many states are now legalizing human composting and allowing people to let their loved ones be
First lets speak of what composting is, composting is the process of recycling organic
matter(organic matter being basically anything living or once living). When living things die
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bacteria and fungi will come along and decompose the matter. What is left over from this
decomposition is what we call soil. In the podcast Should We Compost Human Bodies the
speaker Wendy Zukerman explains that little bacterial microbes release chemicals that break
down whatever organic material there is and the bi-product of that is soil(Zukerman). In order for
these microbes to work they need an environment of heat moisture and oxygen, without
something like oxygen the material will undergo something called anaerobic decomposition
which is harmful to the environment because it releases carbon dioxide and methane into the
atmosphere. But with near-perfect conditions, the microbes will start to break down the material
extremely quickly, and that's what core composting is, creating an environment such that
microbes can quickly break down organic matter. Breaking down this matter puts nutrients back
into the soil, the Natural Resources Defense Council(NRDC) released an article titled
Composting 101 and it said that “Compost contains three primary nutrients needed by garden
things that are normally composted are fruit and vegetable leftovers, food leftovers, eggshells,
teabags, and even sometimes newspaper. Composting 101 and Should We Compost Human
Bodies provided good background knowledge on composting and its effects. Now let's keep
talking about the environment and mention the effects that cremation and funerals have on it.
Typical funerals have the body in a casket and often times before they are put into the ground
they will open the casket so that people can see the body one last time. What a lot of people don’t
know is that there was a whole process to get that body there and looking like that. Before the
viewing, the body is pumped full of chemicals such as formaldehyde, phenol, and menthol which
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all are toxic to the environment. The article Why Conventional Burial Harms the Environment
by Milton Fields(company name) says that “It’s estimated that 800,000 gallons of formaldehyde
are placed in the ground each year due to conventional burials.”(Milton Fields). On top of
chemicals funerals also use a lot of materials such as wood. It is stated that “In just one year, the
amount of casket wood buried is equivalent to about 4 million acres of forest.” this is crazy,
people are chopping down millions of acres of land just to put the wood right back into the
ground. When looking at cremations it is often advertised as the more environmentally friendly
option but just because it's better than funerals doesn’t mean it's good. Our bodies are
carbon-based, which means that every part of our body is partly made up of carbon so when our
body is burned all that carbon is released as carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Clearly this is a
huge problem, also cremation requires fuel as well which is more pollutants in the air. The
National Geographic article The environmental toll of cremating the dead by Becky Little says
cremation“takes up about the same amount of energy and has the same emissions as about two
tanks of gas in an average car”(Little). These articles are good representations of how damaging
Research questions
I have already talked about some questions such as what is composting, and are funerals and
a. This was the basis of my research, it was already stated that composting is the
origin. The podcast Should We Compost Human Bodies talks about a strory
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where a farmer had chickens that got sick, so instead of throwing them away he
decided to compost them, this story sparked an idea in the head of a woman
named Katrina Spade, if farm animals can be composted than so can humans and
through testing, she was able to create a company that does just that (Zukerman).
a. From our research, it has shown that most people choose to do cremations and
this is evident by the statistics from the statistics page of the Nationals funeral
director association where “ N FDA's 2021 Cremation and Burial Report, the
2021 cremation rate is projected to be 57.5% and the burial rate is projected to be
36.6% ”(NFDA). Then when looking at the prices it is clear to see why, when it
comes to a funeral and a cremation with a funeral ceremony the prices are very
similar with the average funeral being $7,848 but for just a cremation The
People Choose One Over the Other they say that pure cremations can range from
a. This wasn’t a question i expected to get a direct answer from but from the
savings or for some other reason” This shows that there is clearly a market for
Conclusion
This research paper is dedicated to learning about human composting and presenting it as the
best option over funerals and cremation. People should greatly consider human composting over
other forms of death rituals because It is better for the environment, It is cheaper than a funeral,