The population of people on Earth has been growing at an exponential rate, especially after new medial advances causing a rise in life expectancy and a fall in infant mortality rates. In many countries, the population density has become so high; the land available in those countries can no longer support the amount of people living there, let alone be able to bury their dead. Burying the dead in dense cities has become either impossible or very expensive. We can see various ways different cultures have tried to solve this problem, such as cremation and sky burials in Asia, as well as ossuaries and catacombs in Europe.

Issues involving space or the lack of it are becoming increasingly important in our current day and age. Many of these problems are being solved by compacting living spaces and building progressively taller buildings. A great example of a culture attempting to adapt to these new situations can be seen in Japan. Most families living in Japan (especially in a city like Tokyo) are forced into tiny apartment buildings. Japan also has the infamous Capsule Hotel, which is a hotel with tiny cubicles that fit only one bed that a person would rent out for a night. I have just recently noticed that it strongly resembles a catacomb, but for the living.

China has also been trying to control population rates, by instilling the One Child Policy, in which a family is only allowed to have one child, and are required to receive permission by the government to have an additional child, and are also taxed for it. The parents are then sterilized, or the government forces abortions if they get pregnant a third time.

With human life taking over earth’s available land, we are finding it increasingly challenging to find places to put human remains. Burying the dead is also significantly more costly than other methods, such as cremation, promession, and resomation; all of which, takes the remains of loved ones, and reduces it to its most basic matter. A cost for a burial in New York City would be around $6500, while cremation costs around $780.

Aside from being expensive and taking up more space, burials are more environmentally harmful than other new alternatives such as resomation and promession. Toxic chemicals used for embalming could leak into the earth, the ground water, and other water sources. The making of caskets also uses up our natural resources. Many people prefer to use rare woods such as mahogany for caskets and subsequently reduce our natural resources and kill off our ever-decreasing forests. Promession and resomation on the other hand uses economically friendly processes that do not emit any harmful chemicals into the environment. With the resulting ashes from these alternatives, relatives and loved ones also have the choice to spread the ashes of the deceased, bury it, or keep it close by, in their homes.