Okay, this one might be a bit creepy.

You probably don’t spend a lot of time thinking about what you want people to do with your body after you die.  You figure there are just two options anyway – burial or cremation – so how hard can it be?  Problem is, neither are very environmentally friendly.   Burial takes up a huge amount of space and dumps hundreds of thousands of gallons of formaldehyde into the ground.  Cremation uses enormous amounts of energy to keep the furnace at 800-1000 degrees Celsius.  Cremating your average body releases about 200 kg of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

And then there’s all those caskets – tons of copper, bronze and steel, as well as 30 million board feet of hardwood each year in the USA alone.

Susanne Wiigh-Masak

Or you could be buried…. ecologically.

A.K.A. corpse composting.

The process was developed by Susanne Wiigh-Mäsak, a Swedish biologist, who was looking for a green-yet-dignified way to rest in peace.  Here’s how it works:

If you’re really hard-core then you can compost the powder, turning it into soil in 6-12 months.