Talk:Promession

United States Patent 5701642 - An ecological burial apparatus and method are accomplished by placing a corpse into a coffin structure made of a material containing a nutrient or fertilizer or combinations thereof. The corpse and coffin structure are buried in the ground and a tree is planted above the coffin structure so that when the coffin structure biodegrades the nutrient or fertilizer or combinations thereof are capable of being supplied to the tree to create an ecologically sound environment. (This method would only work in an aerobic environment, as the bacteria and fungi responsible for decomposition need oxygen. Below ground there are very much reduced oxygen levels, which is why no 'normal burial' can be truly green, as anaerobic decomposition releases methane, a potent greenhouse gas. John Cossham, York, UK 17:54, 6 April 2012 (UTC) )

United States Patent 6516501 - Method and apparatus for ecological burial, an urn which comprises a series of pod-like containers made of compressed organic matter, porcelain, and glass, designed to function as cinerary urns (i.e. receptacles for human ashes) is disclosed. The urn is meant to interact with its surroundings by dissolving into it, and eventually producing a living monument, in the form of a tree, or a plant, in memory of the deceased person whose ashes it contains.

Searching the Centre for Natural Burial website (with an archive of over 300 natural burial articles dating back to 1995) with the search string "ecological burial" returns a single article (which is NOT related to Promessa) while searching for Promessa or Promession returns half a dozen articles each. The popular media does not recognize "ecological burial" with this process.

"for one thing why would it be necessary to freeze the body in Liquid Nitrogen?" So it will shatter when vibrated. The aim is to reduce the body to a dry powder. I've read (in New Scientist if I recall correctly) that plants love the stuff.


 * Nitrogen is a common element of the atmosphere. When it evaporates, it combines into N2 molecules and resumes its natural place as a component of air. They also dry out the remains before burial, so most of the nitrogen and water would be gone before you went in the ground. How does the saying go, that without water, we are nothing but a few dollars' worth of chemicals? MFNickster 07:22, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't think Hibernian was questioning the effects of nitrogen on the environment, but the production of that quantity of liquid nitrogen's effect on the environment. --saisugoi 13:45, 27 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Indeed I was not questioning whether Nitrogen is harmful to the Environment, obviously it isn't, I am however questioning why it is necessary, in a so called ecological funeral, to use all these Industrial Processes, which would be harmful to the environment (such as creating and using Liquid Nitrogen and this "Vibrating" thing too). Can anyone tell me what the Carbon footprint of this Method is? I would bet it is significantly larger than a normal burial.
 * --Hibernian 07:54, 1 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Commercial liquid nitrogen is produced by the fractional distillation of liquid air. Oxygen, argon, krypton, neon, and xenon are produced by the same process. The commercial demand for oxygen (both gaseous and liquid) is huge, so liquid nitrogen is really just a byproduct.  The cost of liquid nitrogen (about $0.30/gal IIRC) is mostly in transportation and depends on how close you are to a liquid air plant.  Refrigerating all that nitrogen until use does take energy, but it also takes a lot of energy and wood to make a modern coffin.  Homo stannous 02:15, 4 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Furthermore, the article states that the purpose of turning the body to dust is to permit aerobic decomposition rather than anaerobic decomposition. I don't know how much that helps (I've heard elsewhere that aerobic decomposition is dominant only in the top 6" of soil), but anaerobic decomposition produces methane, which is a much worse greenhouse gas than CO2.  I suspect that the only reason why they dry the body afterward is to keep the coffin from getting soggy. Homo stannous 15:40, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Currently, letting a human body rot naturally in a compost heap is not an available option, although it would be the most eco-friendly disposal method (it's being used extensively in the United States for roadkill deer etc and fallen stock, using woodchips). One has to remember the funeral has two functions: disposal of cadavers and as a way for family/friends to say goodbye. Therefore it has to be appropriate for the second function, and the idea of putting a loved-one's body into a heap of woodchips might be thought of as less acceptable than a deep hole or a furnace. However, if it becomes available by the time I die, this is what I'd like. And Promession would be a close second choice, as relatives etc see the small casket buried and could plant a tree on or near the spot. Johncossham (talk) 12:10, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Also I've never heard of there being any environmental harm to slow decay rates of standard burials. As of cremation, fillings haven't used mercury for decades, and are generally removed before cremation anyways. Also, isn't all the carbon in a human body originally from plants eaten by the person or the things that the person ate, and thus technically not adding significant CO2 to the atmosphere? There is hardly any information on these questions.RuediiX 13:56, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Cremation uses 50 to 120 cubic metres of fossil gas, adding CO2 to the atmosphere. There are still lots of mercury fillings out there, which is why expensive arresting gear is being added to crematoria. Fillings are not removed as this (I am led to believe) constitutes 'assault' on the body. The process also adds oxides of nitrogen and other pollutants. 'Normal' deep burial adds methane slowly to the atmosphere as the decay is anaerobic, methane being a potent greenhouse gas. Promession is eco-friendly as it uses waste liquid nitrogen and the freeze-dried remains rot aerobically in the top few centimetres of the soil. Johncossham (talk) 11:58, 9 September 2009 (UTC) - AFAIK, all burial methods will result in all the CO2 eventually going into the atmosphere, with the exception of embalming.

The person's diet has little to do with it, except that if they are obese, then it can actually take less energy to cremate them, because the fat burns like fuel. It's grotesque to consider such things, but that's the scientific fact.

People are unlikely to have toxic substances in them unless they died from poisoning, because what is toxic to the environment is typically toxic to humans, especially since it will have the highest concentration in the person. That is probably why they stopped using mercury fillings. Other types of implants are intentionally inert so they won't react biologically. --Mikiemike (talk) 11:25, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Is this a press release?
This article reads like a press release for the company. Not sure how to mark that, as I'm only an occasional participant here.


 * fixed (I hope) Chrismorey (talk) 06:27, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Regarding the use of liquid nitrogen -- LN2 is a byproduct of producing LOX, so it really isn't all that expensive. Industrial uses of oxygen far outweigh the need for liquid nitrogen. It's sort of like the leather industry being a byproduct of the meat industry; nobody raises cows for their hides, it's just a few extra dollars on top of the value of the meat. 98.228.56.206 (talk) 21:03, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Update on liquid nitrogen: liquid nitrogen (LN2) is never a 'waste product' of the modern oxygen industry. I had a long conversation about this with Mohammad Kalbassi from http://www.airproducts.com/ about whether the claims that Promessa Organic has made about LN2 being a waste product were true. Certainly, gaseous nitrogen is a byproduct of the liquid oxygen (LOx) production, but where LN2 is made, it always has a buyer and there is very little 'waste' in their industry. According to Kalbassi, the energy required for a metric tonne of LN2 or LOx is 160kWh. John Cossham, York, UK 18:09, 6 April 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Johncossham (talk • contribs)

Advertorial
I've improved the tone but the status of the project is not clear from the article. I've marked it "proposed" because no one seems to be actually doing it Chrismorey (talk) 06:27, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Suggestions
I checked some of the citations and realized that two of the links do not function. Reference number one redirects to 404 Page Not Found, and reference number three is no longer available. Some updates on the references must be made to ensure there is no plagiarism. Also, perhaps adding a citation for Susanne Wiigh-Mäsak would prove helpful, as it may be useful to know about the biologist who developed the whole concept of promession. Inserting diagrams would allow for a better understanding of the holistic process. Lastly, the "Public opinion" section of the article does not equally represent all sides of the argument on promession. Only positive opinions on this form of disposal are presented; it is crucial to denote all sides of the argument. The public opinion poll seems fairly biased, as no potential consequences of promession are included within the article. Portraying the possible detriments of this method of disposal would help to relieve any doubts of impartiality towards promession. Bridginator (talk) 01:20, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

I love the notion that freezing a body in liquid nitrogen would cause it to "crystallise". It sounds so nice doesn't it - everyone thinks crystals are beautiful, perfect, and maybe even have some kind of mystic powers. But liquid nitrogen would not cause a corpse to crystallise. So for me, the method described in this article fails at the starting blocks.Mysteryeditor99 (talk) 23:10, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

Neutral point of view
I just cleaned up some language that sounded too promotional and was not clearly expressing a neutral point of view. Also: there are no sources to verify the process. I'm very close to suggesting this article be deleted. Timoluege (talk) 10:24, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

Merged from Talk:Promessa Organic
Susanne Wiigh-Mäsak has been talking to teams all over the world about building a 'Promator' as she calls the machine she has invented, however, there is still no independently verifiable evidence that the process works as described. Any evidence such as photos, video or data would be most welcome. There is a lot of positivity and interest in funeral circles in this technology as it could be an ethical alternative to cremation and normal burial, so evidence is important. John Cossham, York, UK 23:22, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Having talked to Wiigh-Mäsak, she is keen for people to not focus on the technology and engineering, which is why she has not published photos and other 'evidence' of the process working. She is hoping that when people think of Promession, they think of nature, trees and beautiful garden-like graveyards. John Cossham, York, UK 18:15, 6 April 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Johncossham (talk • contribs)

Alternatives to burial and cremation are becoming more topical in England at the moment with the Law Commission potential project in England on "A modern framework for disposing of the dead" having been announced mid-December 2017.

Promession does not appear to have moved on beyond a concept (which is described differently in different sources and at different times) anywhere in the world so far as I can tell from extensive web searches in both English and Swedish. A constant in the description is that the corpse frozen to cryogenic temperatures is easily broken up to a dust. I can see no support for this notion in any published scientific papers nor on popular science and cookery type videos on Youtube which show various things being done to crack up liquid nitrogen frozen pieces of meat, legs of beef, turkeys etc.

It is hard to edit the article in a way acceptable to Wiki as it is difficult to provide links to things which do not exist --- one is just left with saying pretty much what Johncossham above did in 2012 and saying that any hard evidence that this process works as described is not available.

The hardest thing of all to comprehend is how a company, or its successors, keeps going for so long with no sales of the product it states it intends to sell. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mysteryeditor99 (talk • contribs) 22:56, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

I'm not terribly familiar with Wikipedia guidelines/terminology, but occasionally I see something to the effect of "article appears to be written like an advertisement" or "appears to be written by someone too close to the company/product" etc. I originally came to make a small edit to the sentence "This is indeed one of the most environmentally sound burial method." because if it's "one of" then "method" should be plural ("methods")... however it struck me that this sentence seems to be written by someone with English as a second language, and has aroused my suspicions. I wanted to add a [citation needed] or something similar to at least show a comparison of methods, or at very least something showing the environmental impacts of normal burial methods. I feel, otherwise, that "This is indeed" is superfluous, and "environmentally sound" is neither quantified or corroborated. Clearly if there is complete decomposition to soil and a tree is sustained, it would seem to follow that this is the most negligible "impact on the environment", however, if this is still on land reserved for a burial site, the area isn't exactly returned to nature, and most cemeteries seem to have plenty of trees and grass... unless there's some runoff from normal burials etc, thinking critically, I don't see how this is measurably better or worse than simply burying a body in a casket. The land isn't being reclaimed by nature any more than a normal cemetery? Not that this is a highly trafficked page I'm sure, but just some points I noticed. In any case, I'll make the grammatical change to the aforementioned sentence. Thanks. Enotdetcelfer (talk) 20:41, 28 January 2018 (UTC)