Sky Burial - The Greenest Solution

After I had written yesterday's post, it occured to me that even promession must entail some environmental damage. The processes involved in achieving those incredibly low temperatures must generate a certain amount of carbon. So I started to cogitate - what would be the ideal method for us to adopt, from a green point of view? Then it occured to me - Sky Burials! Just like the ancient Zoroastrians of Persia and of course, the Tibetans.

A Sky Burial site in Tibet - note the hammer for pulverising the bones.

In the highlands of Tibet wood is a precious commodity, so much so that it could not be wasted on fuelling pyres. For much of the year the ground is frozen solid making gravedigging practically impossible, so the Tibetan solution is to take the corpse to a high and desolate place, eviscerate it, pulverise the bones and then wait for an hour or two until the vultures have completely devoured everything. This might sound a little gruesome but it has the advantage of being entirely carbon-neutral and, in line with Tibetan Buddhist principles of generosity and compassion, it provides sustenance to the birds. The question is whether it would work here or not. True, we don't have a native population of vultures here but there might well be other species who could do the needful almost as effectively. And as for the siting of these sky cemeteries, as long as they are sufficiently far from centres of population they should not cause too much offence. Well anyway, food for thought I suppose (if not for the pigeons).

Bone Idle