“Green burials” may be coming to Colorado

It’s 2019 and everyone is going green, whether it’s investing in hybrid cars, ditching your natural gas appliances or doing anything else to reduce your “carbon footprint.” But one group of people have been left behind in this craze… the dead. What can the recently deceased do to “go green” after shuffling off the mortal coil? Out in Colorado, they may have the answer. A bill is being introduced to legalize “green burials.”
So how does this work? CBS Denver explains that it involves taking your departed loved ones and converting them to, um… soil.

A bill being proposed by two Colorado lawmakers would legalize green burials — which turns human remains into soil that can be returned to family members. It is also referred to as Natural Organic Reduction. The process takes about a month and generates a cubic yard of material per person.
“For most Coloradans, there are two main choices after death: burial or cremation. Representative Brianna Titone and Senator Robert Rodriguez are planning to bring a bill to the General Assembly that would give Coloradans another legal option: they can have their bodies turned into soil,” officials stated.
“The novel approach, known as ‘Natural Organic Reduction’ involves placing bodies in individual vessels and gently decomposing them into a nutrient-dense soil that can then be returned to families,” officials explained.

They may be calling it “natural organic reduction” but having grown up in farm country, my family had a different name for it. Composting. Taking the remains and putting them in some sort of vessel and “gently decomposing them” sounds precisely the same. (By the way, how do you “gently” decompose something? Doesn’t it just happen naturally?)

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