Paper short abstract:

Understanding ‘waste’ as an untapped resource that “[yearns] for transformation” (Lau, 2022 p.2), I will consider the (dead) human body as a waste matter that can be 'recycled' through the practice of natural burial and, therefore, made available to a broad network of more-than-human others.

Paper long abstract:

In death, the human body undergoes a number of transformations. First, there is a physiological change – breathing stops, the person becomes unresponsive – and then there is an ontological transition: the person is declared dead. Without further intervention, the body will begin to decay. Taking a ‘waste perspective’, I will consider the management of the body once it is known to be dead and explore the recent (re)emergence of nature-based interventions in deathcare. Specifically, I will explore how natural burial sites deploy the language of ‘recycling’ as a means of repurposing the aesthetics of rot and decomposition towards environmentally beneficial ends.

Increasingly popular in the UK and the US, natural burial offers a low-carbon alternative to cremation and avoids the use of toxic substances, such as formaldehyde, associated with standard burials. Through the work of microbes and other soil-based life, the body is transformed and (re)integrated into the environmental milieu. In this way, death no longer represents a terminus but, through the technologies of decay, an opportunity for future life. This leads to the body being redefined, in death, as a porous entity that is open to more-than-human entanglement.

By reworking the aesthetics of death, and avoiding the language of decay, natural burial sites allow for the body to undergo an ethical and emotional transformation that makes it available to a diverse ecology of actors and agents. As a waste matter, the (dead) human body therefore acts as a bridge between human and more-than-human worlds.