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Turning Dead People Into Materials

By Rain Noe - January 22, 2014

in Materials

Once upon a time, human beings were biodegradable. But with modern-day corpses shot full of embalming chemicals before being sealed inside metal coffins, it will be a long time, if ever, before those bodies go back into the earth.

The alternate method of cremation, of course, turns human bodies into ash; and now Swiss company Algordanza has taken it a step further, by figuring out how to compress that ash into diamonds. For US $5,000 to $22,000, your remains, or those of a loved one, can be turned into as many as nine diamonds, presumably depending on the volume of ash. And what's fascinating is that there is some color variation:

Most of the stones come out blue, [Algordanza CEO Rinaldo] Willy says, because contains trace amounts of boron, an element that bone formation. Occasionally, though, a diamond pops out white, yellow or close to black - Willy's not sure why. Regardless, he says, "every diamond from each person is slightly different. It's always a unique diamond."Bling not your thing? Spanish industrial designer Gerald Moline can help you spend your next life entwined with a tree. Moline invented the Bios Urn, a kind of biodegradable pot created from coconut shell, peat and cellulose. With your ashes and the seed of your choice placed inside, the entire thing can then be buried. Once germination takes place, your soul is now in a position to provide some shade—or perhaps lumber—for the next generation.

The Bios Urn's default seed is for pine, but we know you design snobs will want to go for mahogany, walnut or maybe teak. (Extra points for irony: Stipulate in your will that the lumber be used to make a coffin for a future descendant.)

Via NPR and Big Think

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Mike Nelson Pedde

10 years ago

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You can also choose to become a part of a human-made coral reef. One company that does this is: http://www.eternalreefs.com/

I think having the ashes made into a diamond, mounted into an engagement ring and then given away anonymously might be an intriguing idea. Nobody has to know where the diamond came from and for generations (one would hope) the ring would be associated with love and joy! :-)

Mike.
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Eric

10 years ago

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If you want to take Gerald Moline's concept one step further you can (or could, since it's not legal yet, at least not in Sweden) use promession before your remains get placed inside his urn.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promession
http://www.promessa.se/en/
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Narut

10 years ago

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Howard Wallowitz talked about this on Big Bang a while ago.

C77, you are behind a sitcom!
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