People Mulch
When I heard about this from someone, I thought it just sounded really cool (as it were), and would cut down on emission of green-house gases from crematoria, and promote the planting of trees. Another part of it, of course, is that I just like Swedes.
A town in Sweden plans to become the first place in the world where corpses will be disposed of by freeze-drying, as an environmentally friendly alternative to cremation or burial. Jonkoping, in southern Sweden, is to turn its crematorium into a so-called promatorium next year.
Swedes will then have the chance to bury their dead according to the pioneering method, which involves freezing the body, dipping it in liquid nitrogen and gently vibrating it to shatter it into powder. This is put into a small box made of potato or corn starch and placed in a shallow grave, where it will disintegrate within six to 12 months.
People are to be encouraged to plant a tree on the grave. It would feed off the compost formed from the body, to emphasise the organic cycle of life.
[…]
The technique was conceived by a Swedish biologist, Susanne Wiigh-Masak, 49, who said: "Mulching was nature's original plan for us, and that's what used to happen to us at the start of humanity – we went back into the soil."
[Kate Connolly (in Berlin), "Sweden's new funeral rite – bodies freeze-dried, powdered and made into tree mulch", The Telegraph [UK], 28 September 2005.]