Indian envoy warns of 'big red line,' days after charges laid in Nijjar case
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
In a suburban Denver warehouse tucked between an auto repair shop and a computer recycling business, Seth Viddal is dealing with life and death.
He and one of his employees have built a "vessel" they hope will usher in a more environmentally friendly era of mortuary science that includes the natural organic reduction of human remains, also known as body composting.
"It's a natural process where the body is returned to an elemental level over a short period of time," said Viddal, who likened the practice to backyard composting of food scraps and yard waste. "This is the same process but done with a human body inside of a vessel, and in our case, in a controlled environment."
On Sept. 7, Colorado became the second state after Washington to allow human body composting. Oregon will allow the practice beginning next July. In Washington, the three businesses licensed to compost human remains have transformed at least 85 bodies since the law took effect in May 2020, and more than 900 people have signed up for the service as natural funerals become more popular.
Viddal, who co-owns The Natural Funeral in Lafayette, lobbied the Colorado Legislature for the option and started building a prototype vessel in an industrial area soon after the bipartisan bill was signed into law.
Based on a design being used in Washington, the insulated wooden box is about 7 feet long (2 metres), 3 feet wide and 3 feet deep, lined with waterproof roofing material and packed with wood chips and straw. Two large spool wheels on either end allow it to be rolled across the floor, providing the oxygenation, agitation and absorption required for a body to compost.
Viddal calls the process an "exciting ecological option," and in death, he also sees life.
"Composting itself is a very living function and it's performed by living organisms. ... There are billions of microbial, living things in our digestive tracts and just contained in our body. And when our one life ceases, the life of those microbes does not cease," he said.
After about three months, the vessel is opened and the "soil" is filtered for medical devices like prosthetics, pacemakers or joint replacements. The remaining large bones are then pulverized and returned to the vessel for another three months of composting. Teeth are removed to prevent contamination from mercury in fillings.
The vessel must reach 131 degrees Fahrenheit (55 Celsius) for 72 continuous hours to kill any bacteria and pathogens. The high temperature occurs naturally during the breakdown of the body in an enclosed box.
In six months, the body, wood chips and straw will transform into enough soil to fill the bed of a pickup truck. Family members can keep the soil to spread in their yards, but Colorado law forbids selling it and using it commercially to grow food for human consumption and only allows licensed funeral homes and crematories to compost human bodies.
"It accomplishes the conversion of the body back into a very beneficial substance -- soil, earth," said Viddal, who envisions building more than 50 body composting vessels.
The Natural Funeral charges $7,900 for body composting, compared with $2,200 for flame cremation, and Viddal notes that a traditional burial and service in the Denver area can run well north of $10,000. The company has not yet composted any bodies, but several people have signed up and paid for the service.
AJ Killeen, 40, of Boulder, has already expressed interest in having his body composted when he dies, even though he is relatively young.
After a car accident a couple years ago, a doctor discovered Killeen had a heart condition. That got Killeen thinking about what would happen to his body after he dies, and composting seemed like a natural fit.
"It's what's going to happen anyway, right? I mean, we're all going to turn to dust, basically. So this is just a little more natural," he said. "They're going to control the humidity. They're going to control the soil amendments and hopefully some worms and some mushrooms find a good home in me for a few months. And, you know, at the other end of it, I'll be just a few bags of dirt."
Killeen, who manages commercial real estate, said his concern for the environment played a large role in considering the option. Flame cremation burns fossil fuels that can contribute to climate change, and the process also releases toxic, mercury-laden fumes into the atmosphere. Traditional burial takes up space in a cemetery that will use additional resources to keep the plot constantly watered and mowed.
"I always joke that I hope I expire on trash day if that's just easier for my family," said Killeen, who composts food scraps and yard waste through the city's collection program.
Killeen is among a growing number of people considering more natural funeral options, especially since the pandemic began, and he thinks the option will become more accepted once people get over "the ick factor."
The Colorado Catholic Conference, a group of bishops aimed at molding public policy, opposed the bill, saying body composting "does not promote human dignity." Some rabbis also are against body composting because they say it violates Jewish religious law. Other opponents are concerned there is not enough research on whether the compost contaminates soil and there is no way to prevent people from using it in home vegetable gardens.
"We don't know what they're going to do with it if they take it all home," said Stacey Kleinman, a board member of the Colorado Funeral Directors Association. They helped craft the legislation, but the group's stance is neutral.
Even with the opposition, several states are considering the option as Americans become more open to afterlife alternatives.
According to a Choice Mutual Insurance Agency survey of 1,500 Americans this summer, when many were burying loved ones killed by the coronavirus, 21 per cent said the pandemic changed how they want their body disposed of. Traditional burial and cremation remained the front-runners, but 11 per cent said they would opt for burial involving natural decomposition without a casket. Only 4 per cent said they would choose that option in a similar survey conducted in 2020.
Choice Mutual, which specializes in burial insurance, did not specifically ask about body composting, but the survey highlights an increased interest in more natural and environmentally friendly options.
Micah Truman, CEO and founder of Return Home south of Seattle, runs an 11,500-square-foot (1,068-square-meter) facility that includes 74 vessels. So far, his company has composted 16 bodies in what he describes as an "extremely precise scientific operation" that takes only 60 days.
Truman said that because the composting option is so new, "it's really a matter of changing hearts and minds right now." But he has been surprised by how many young people are interested, including someone who recently signed up their 8-year-old child.
"Our young people are going to teach us how to die better. It's been really powerful for us," Truman said. "I think what's happened is that the younger generation really genuinely understands that we have to make sure that our Earth can stay whole."
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
With Donald Trump sitting just feet away, Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at the former president's hush money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actor says they had in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
The U.S. paused a shipment of bombs to Israel last week over concerns that Israel was approaching a decision on launching a full-scale assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah against the wishes of the U.S.
Footage from dozens of security cameras in the area of Drake’s Bridle Path mansion could be the key to identifying the suspect responsible for shooting and seriously injuring a security guard outside the rapper’s sprawling home early Tuesday morning, a former Toronto homicide detective says.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
Susan Buckner, best known for playing peppy Rydell High School cheerleader Patty Simcox in the 1978 classic movie musical 'Grease,' has died. She was 72.
Accused killer Jeremy Skibicki could have a challenging time convincing a judge that he is not criminally responsible for the deaths of four Indigenous women, a legal analyst says.
A Calgary bylaw requiring businesses to charge a minimum bag fee and only provide single-use items when requested has officially been tossed.
Two Nova Scotia men are dead after a boat they were travelling in sank in the Annapolis River in Granville Centre, N.S., on Monday.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.