Portland to test expansion of curbside composting program (Jack Bog's Blog)

Heartened by the public response to its new food scrap composting system, the City of Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability today announced an expansion of the program. Effective January 1, a pilot project will begin in selected neighborhoods throughout the city in which residents can include human remains of their relatives and housemates in their green yard debris carts.

"In the cemetery, a corpse produces methane, a greenhouse gas that causes climate change," said Susan Anderson, the city's planning director. "It also is an unsustainable use of urban real estate, which is much better devoted to mixed-use, higher-density infill. With cremation, the releases of greenhouse gases are even more pronounced and obvious.

"All of this waste can be composted and transformed into a valuable product. Composting does not produce methane, so it helps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and produces a valuable agricultural product for better soils and gardens," Anderson said.

She added that the use of the city's yard debris system for human composting also achieves the city's emerging goal of social equity, in that it allows poorer families to avoid the high cost of a funeral, which can run into the thousands of dollars. The test program will be instituted in neighborhoods along the MAX rail line, where it is expected to receive heavier use.

The human composting process has been in use in Sweden for several years, developed by the company Promessa. To prepare human remains for composting, the body is placed in a casket, frozen to zero degrees Farenheit, and lowered into a vat of liquid nitrogen. Vibration causes the body to disintegrate into powder. Vacuums and magnets are used to remove liquid and metals and the remains are then placed in a cornstarch coffin for shallow burial. Once buried, the cadaver composts in six months to a year, at which time it can be sold as an organic fertilizer.

The expansion of the Portland program is a public-private partnership among the city, Metro, and Soprano Sanitation, a "green"-certified waste management firm in Leonia, New Jersey.

Comments (36)

"a pilot project will begin in selected neighborhoods throughout the city in which residents can include human remains of their relatives and housemates in their green yard debris carts."

What about neighbors and random passers-by?

Posted by Random | November 22, 2011 4:55 PM

Bring out your dead!

Posted by Allan L. | November 22, 2011 5:05 PM

Fantastic job, Jack. Brilliant.

Posted by paul | November 22, 2011 5:06 PM

Too funny! You have undone yourself. Obviously, you have too much spare time on your hands.

Posted by RickN | November 22, 2011 5:08 PM

Evidently the Governor will not be participating.

Posted by Allan L. | November 22, 2011 5:09 PM

http://www.resomation.com/

Just a small charge added to your Portland Water bill.

Go By Big Pipe!

Posted by Old Zeb | November 22, 2011 5:12 PM

Ha! But watch out, those stiffs at City Hall & Metro just had little LEDs go off over their bobbling heads. They're googling like crazy right now.

Posted by Mojo | November 22, 2011 5:22 PM

Don't worry about the cost. To pay for our share, part of heaven will be turned into an urban renewal district.

Posted by Bill McDonald | November 22, 2011 5:29 PM

Didn't the Soylent Corporation receive one of the Portland Seed Fund Grants earlier this month?

Posted by Cass | November 22, 2011 5:31 PM

Next up composting toilets. It make no sense and is not sustainable to use Bull Run water to remove human waste from the city's homes.

And a six pack of self esteem to the best tag line; Go by ____. Fill in the blank please.

Posted by Evergreen Libertarian | November 22, 2011 5:34 PM

WOW is that rhododendron in my yard is doing so well now!

Posted by Portland Native | November 22, 2011 5:46 PM

The name of the company producing the cornstarch coffin:

"Box Elders"

Posted by Starbuck | November 22, 2011 6:07 PM

Laugh now, cry later. It could happen.
Good one Jack.

Posted by dm | November 22, 2011 6:18 PM

I think we're gonna need a bigger can.

Posted by cbb | November 22, 2011 6:26 PM

Take heart ... you're only going to need a bigger can every now and then.

Posted by Molly | November 22, 2011 6:51 PM

So will it be ok to be overweight? Think of all that compost that could be made from our more gravitationally challenged citizens.

Posted by roy | November 22, 2011 6:52 PM

I hope I die on a Tuesday. Trash pickup is Wednesday morning.

Posted by John | November 22, 2011 7:29 PM

Old Zeb: I thought your link to Resomation.com was a spoof but it looks like it could solve all of our composting needs. Not only is it green "The price will be determined by the equipment operator(City of Portland?) (Resomation Ltd does not operate the equipment but supplies it to industry operators). Similarly to cremation this will vary from country to country and will depend upon how widely the process is adopted."

Posted by dhughes609 | November 22, 2011 7:55 PM

link to Resomation.com

Isn't that based on an episode of Breaking Bad?

Posted by Allan L. | November 22, 2011 8:15 PM

And now the bin is near
And so I face the final compost
My friend I'll say it clear before
the truck arrives for my ghost

I've lived a life that's full
I've pedaled each and every bikeway
And more, much more than this
I died the green way

Regrets I've had a few
But then again too few to mention
I threw out a can or two
And took
the leaf removal fee exemption

I used some plastic bags even though
I knew that they would not decay
but more, much more than this
I died the green way

Yes there were times I'm sure you knew
When I threw out more than I could chew
The brown buckets? There was doubt
but I saved my scraps and threw them out,
It didn't go well, it smelled like hell
but I lived the green way

For what is a man, what has he got
If not the earth, then he has not
The bioswales? Explainable.
It's in the word "sustainable"
So if you're toast, become compost
And die the green way

I died the green way

Posted by Bill McDonald | November 22, 2011 9:25 PM

I have a friend who is a avid duck hunter. He just came back from a 10 day trip to Canada and Montana with a lot of birds. All the carcasses went into the curbside yard waste /compost bin. His wife said the maggot festival in the bin was the most disgusting thing she had ever seen in her life. Not a dead guy in the bin but not far off, either.

Posted by dg | November 22, 2011 9:27 PM

Thank you, Bill. You are truly our chairman of the board.

Posted by Jack Bog | November 22, 2011 10:02 PM

You are scaring the children. My kid is threatening to never come back to Portland.

Posted by Nolo | November 22, 2011 11:18 PM

Willy Tom Frank?!? Awesome!

And Bill? You fricken rock!

Posted by Mr Know it All | November 23, 2011 1:07 AM

Zombie-phobic clowns. Read through it, there is no provision or exemption given for zombies. Where is a dead lawyer when you need one? On the flip side, what is a zombie really going to do with money? No matter it's the principle of the thing. Time for a zombie drum circle, gather at the cemetery blocks (wait, they can't read or follow a map either - no matter).

Posted by Native Oregonian | November 23, 2011 3:45 AM

Who needs the Blazers. We've got Bojack and Bill to entertain us!! Thanks guys.

Posted by daveg | November 23, 2011 4:58 AM

I kept going back and re-reading this last evening and couldn't stop laughing.

Posted by paul | November 23, 2011 5:36 AM

And not a word about most CoP employees being recategorized as "free-range Soylent Green".

Posted by Texas Triffid Ranch | November 23, 2011 8:07 AM

Leonia! Shout out to my hometown!
LOL, be careful Jack - the city might actually take your advice for once.

Posted by makalope | November 23, 2011 8:42 AM

Our cat killed a sewer rat and brought it in the house to show us. First one we've ever seen in sixteen years of living on the block. Coincidence? I doubt it.

Posted by Dave Lister | November 23, 2011 9:31 AM

"The City of Rats"

Posted by clinamen | November 23, 2011 9:43 AM

Hey, don't go hatin' on the rats! It might not be the green carts, but rather the deteriorating sewer infrastructure. Why live in a cart and risk getting composted, when you have the run of miles and miles of sewer pipe!

I presume pets are welcome in the green carts, too. Might take a couple of weeks to get all of the Great Dane out.

Posted by umpire | November 23, 2011 10:31 AM

Great post and wonderful lyric...now I'll be humming My Way all through the Thanksgiving weekend, a good thing!

Posted by Mark Ellis | November 23, 2011 12:16 PM

Portlandia has it down pat in one of their upcoming episodes:

The Sanitation Twins (SamRand?)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLJYQaoLgag&feature=player_embedded

Posted by Max | November 24, 2011 8:13 PM

Laugh all you want, but I want one of these mushroom shroud things when I go. I hope they have made it to scale by then.
http://www.ted.com/talks/jae_rhim_lee.html

Posted by JadeQueen | November 25, 2011 9:49 PM

this is DISGUSTING !!! I am a Portlander FORCED into this stinky, health risk politically correct drivel. They reduce garbage pick up to 2/month, and say, compost the rest, recycle the rest. I am supposed to dump my stinky, smelly spaghetti, gravy, rotting vegies, rotting meats, sauces, all into this green can, supposedly right on top of yard debris???? in the winter we have zero yard debris...so the can just reeks of slimey ooze, oh and soiling the newspapers......this is an outrage....come August this will stink up every neighborhood in Portland, and create huge health risks of diseases......PLEASE get rid of this travesty.....oh, my garbage bill stays the same.....for much less service......the PC Nanny City is here, DISGUSTING, FOUL, CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT

Posted by SpaceRay | December 7, 2011 7:17 PM

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Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Portland to test expansion of curbside composting program

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