Natural burial √
Biodegradable coffin √
Cycle to the burial ground? Well, maybe.
You’ve done all you can to tread lightly on the earth while you’re here and – like the diver who plunges cleanly into the water – you want to make as small a splash as possible when you leave.
But what can you do if you are the problem? What if your body – full of toxins, chemicals and all the detritus of 21st century living – is going to pollute whether you like it or not?
One answer might be decompiculture. We’ve blogged on this before but a recent video from TED gives a fresh insight into the way that mushrooms trained to digest your own body could help clean up the mess you don’t want to leave behind:
The artist involved suggests that this is a journey we should all consider making – not astronauts or aeronauts but decompinauts. Her website is here. What do you think?
I love this. Has anyone proposed what is to be done with the mushrooms once they’ve completed their work?
On a completely shallow note, TED needs to replace their mics with ones that aren’t flesh-colored. At first, I was completely distracted by what looked like a dermatological emergency on her lower cheek.
I would love to think this would work, but my mushroom growing mate, who has been inundated with this link, thinks that her attempts to train the mushrooms to digest flesh are doomed.
Simple, shallow burial is what works, but hats off for shaking the taboo.
Shirley, I see what you mean!
The key point about Jae Rhim Lee is she’s an artist, not a scientific inventor: she makes an interesting statement but her flesh-eating mushroom death suit won’t work when deprived of light underground.
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2011/07/designing-a-mushroom-death-suit.html
Cruel of you to disabuse us, Rupert and Richard. I have been fondly musing on the understated ferocity of the man-eating mushroom.
See what you mean, Shirley.