Shadowing Practice: Eco-burial - Would you consider being composted? | DW Documentary - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Soil is a mixture of minerals, living organisms and decomposing organic matter.
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And this complex mixture is what makes our life on earth possible.
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Death is something completely natural that we have to face, since we're all going to die.
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That's nothing new.
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What makes, as we call it, humization unique is that we're not composting conventional organic matter, such as household waste, but rather human beings.
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For a certain period of time, we might look as humans, and for a longer period of time, we might look like soil.
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And then something else can grow out of that again.
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People want new.
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They're not excited about cremation, and they're definitely not excited about being in a box in the ground.
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This has never happened before.
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It's something completely new.
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It's revolutionary, the idea that human remains should return to the cycle of life.
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People want to stay part of nature, so they'll say, So they'll say, I want to be a tree.
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Human composting is gaining increasing support in several countries.
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In Belgium, a group of campaigners, supported by hundreds of private donors, have launched the first pilot projects.
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Now all we need is 30 or 40 wheelbarrow loads.
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They hope to change the law.
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There are only two legally authorized forms of burial, traditional burial or cremation.
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These are the only two options.
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But people believe there's another one and they ask me about it me about it.
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In 99% of cases they ask me about composting and each time I have to say, sorry I can't offer it.
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Right now Christiane is covering the first pig.
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It's on the same mound of organic material that we'll be using for the others as well.
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We're going to encourage as much microbial activity as possible around the pig.
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To make compost, you only need a few basic elements.
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You need organic material with the right ratio of carbon to nitrogen, and you need oxygen.
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When the temperature and moisture conditions are right, the microorganisms become active.
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Under optimal conditions, they begin to break down and decompose the organic matter.
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This microbial activity generates heat.
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So what you might think is smoke is actually water vapor.
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Pierre, we need the irrigation lens.
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If we bring all the elements together in the right balance, we don't need to add any external energy.
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Nature takes care of that.
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Now for the second carcass, so that passersby on the street don't see it.
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Nature gave me the gift of life, and now I'm giving something back and returning to nature.
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There's something spiritual about it.
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It pushes back against the idea of nothingness, against the idea that everything simply ends.
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Usually they say dead is dead, lights out, you're gone, forgotten.
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But with this concept you remain on earth just in a different form.
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You make your contribution to nature and don't disappear completely.
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Some people believe that humans are above nature.
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We take everything from nature but give nothing back.
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But today there are so many of us that our soils won't survive
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if we strip them of all their nitrogen and phosphorus and don't return these substances to the life cycle.
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We're trying to produce humus from a human body.
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In doing this, we mustn't forget that we have to treat it with dignity.
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In a household compost bin, you can mix waste, like fruit scraps and peels, and aerate the compost.
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But that's not possible with human bodies.
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You can't open up a human body, turn it over, or dismember it.
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It must be treated with dignity.
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In May 2022, the Walloon Parliament held a hearing on humization.
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Alternative burial methods are currently prohibited by law in Belgium.
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Research in this area requires a special legal exemption in every case.
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What more do you want us to do?
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Give us the chance to prove that humization works.
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People have donated their bodies to us for humization research, just as others donate their bodies to medical research.
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We're not reckless.
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If you allow us to conduct experiments on human bodies, we will, of course, do so in a safe manner.
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How can you believe that we wouldn't follow the guidelines?
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Especially since we're asking to be monitored by all scientific and academic authorities.
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The hearing did not result in legal authorization for scientific experiments on human bodies.
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I'll walk around the hills twice to make sure there's no smell.
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The method you're advocating for is a very rudimentary, hands-on approach.
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Yes, that was intentional.
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It was a conscious decision.
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We call it natural, low-tech humization.
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We envision a process that can also be carried out in communities, regions and countries that are poor
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and cannot invest millions of euros in a complex infrastructure where the decomposition of bodies is controlled by computers, valves and the like.
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That doesn't mean we can't standardize or optimize the system.
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I think we have to move with the times.
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It shouldn't be an outdated and cumbersome system.
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We don't want labor costs to be ten times higher just because we do everything by hand.
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We shouldn't
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rush, especially since conditions aren't ideal.
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The mounds can't be reshaped and the aeration can't be restarted.
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We'll monitor the mounds and let nature take its course.
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Our goal is to work with nature.
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Cremation is
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quick, clean and efficient.
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A body can be cremated in about two hours.
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And especially in densely populated cities, we have no other choice.
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If we were to bury all the deceased, our cemeteries would be overcrowded.
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There wouldn't be enough space.
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The coffin with the body is taken to the technical area, where it's placed inside a cremation chamber.
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The body is cremated, leaving behind bones and metal components.
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The metal is sorted out and recycled, and the bones are ground up.
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So when someone is given an urn containing ashes, it's actually ground up bones.
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Very few people know that.
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Good luck.
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Bye to someone and two hours later you get them back in a small, still warm container.
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It's brutal.
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I'm always very nervous when I have to hand over the urn, worried I won't get it right.
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I try to do it as gently as possible.
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It's a very delicate moment, but it has to happen.
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Ashes have a strong symbolic value in our society.
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That's why I don't just put the urn in the trunk with my shopping bags.
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It wouldn't feel right.
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I'd rather have it next to me.
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I'm sorry.
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In German burial forests, becoming a tree remains symbolic.
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But the options in Britain are more tangible.
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Although human composting is not authorized, the rules are less restrictive, and natural burials have been practiced in the UK for 30 years.
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The idea, and it's stated, that the cemetery should not look like a cemetery to a casual observer.
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So they could be walking in the countryside and not realise.
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So, I mean this is great.
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So every time there is a tree there is a person?
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Yes.
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Okay.
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The best natural place, what are the rules there?
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Well they will obviously not allow anybody that's had chemical embalming.
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They want to
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bury people as shallowly as possible in a grave that's dug by hand
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and not by machine and placed in a shroud
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or a coffin that's made of sustainably produced preferably local material
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the best ones will have no stones no markers nothing nothing
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but they'll be planting a tree this is my dad and this is my mum Hello Dad and Mum.
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Bill and June.
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Bill and June.
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So you see there's graves everywhere.
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South Downs has been going since 2000 and there's two and a half thousand people here.
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The trustees who own it have decided the way to maintain their income is to put the price up.
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And it's now out of reach of most people.
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Yeah, but that's ridiculous.
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But still the wealthy people, they're still enjoying it.
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It hasn't affected their income.
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It's always the same thing.
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It's always about, you know, the money.
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Yeah.
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So when I opened this site back in 1999-2000, a single plot here was £350.
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It's now over £4,500.
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Oh, my God.
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Yeah.
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That's way too expensive.
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Yeah, but that's what they've decided to do.
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It's not up to me anymore.
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Oh, there's too many bird boxes.
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Yeah, there are loads of.
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Yeah, that's unnatural.
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Obviously, everybody loves a bird box.
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Look at that.
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It's Bird Box City.
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Yeah.
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The proverbial six foot under is much too deep for the
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body to be of any use to the living layers of the soil.
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And also the anaerobic decomposition is really slow and produces methane and it's not good.
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Less than 90 centimeters.
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It's a nice place, very nice place.
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Everybody who comes to a funeral here is just blown away.
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Yeah, it makes you want to die.
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In a traditional burial, the body is buried and left undisturbed.
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It stays there and that's it.
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But what happens when the cemetery is full?
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Do you exhume the remains?
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Have they completely decomposed by then?
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Once the cemetery is full, it's full.
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You don't disturb the bodies.
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People have been laid to rest there, so now it's a sacred place and you leave them in peace.
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But if we treat every grave this way, will we have enough space?
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Despite the rotation system in our cemeteries here, we're already running out of space.
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How is that supposed to work for graves that remain undisturbed?
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With composting, on the other hand, it's a real cycle.
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The area where composting takes place is used on a rotational basis.
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Once the process is complete, the soil that's created is removed and someone else can be composted there.
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Over there?
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Yes.
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Look, Jérôme, there's nothing to see.
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Perfect.
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And no smell either.
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I don't smell anything.
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I've got the skull here.
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The skull?
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Yes.
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There's a difference between someone weighing 50 kg and someone weighing 150 kg.
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We need to think about that.
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Right now we're working in the ground.
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Should we continue that?
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Or switch to a controlled above-ground system?
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These are the questions we need to discuss to figure out what's the most efficient solution.
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Look at what the microorganisms have done.
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They've eaten away at the skull.
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That's impressive.
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It just goes to show what nature is capable of.
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Incredible.
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Definitely encouraging.
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Watch out!
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We leave the mound like this for nine months and hope that by then the bones, that is, the calcium and phosphorus they contain, will have seeped into the soil,
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leaving us with healthy, fertile soil.
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We're developing a burial method, not a composting technique.
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That's something completely different.
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With a composting technique, it wouldn't matter whether it's pretty or not.
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But a burial method has to meet certain requirements.
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The ritual, practical and psychological aspects.
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I can't take a family to a place that's full of mud mounds, hard to reach and doesn't look nice.
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People want it to look nice.
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There's nothing to do.
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It's got to be beautiful.
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What kind of flowers do you have?
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Field flowers, wild flowers, and sunflowers.
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This is going to be beautiful.
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That's also a beautiful ritual.
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The four cups represent grief, strength, love, and remembrance.
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People think
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there is plenty of humus in a forest, but it takes time.
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That's why there's much less of it than you'd expect.
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That's just how nature works.
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But we'll find humus.
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First we'll clear away an area where you can still see leaves, and underneath that we'll find the humus.
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That's the dark area.
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This here.
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It's very dark, almost black.
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But when I dig deeper, you'll see that the soil gets lighter.
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The soil is now brown soil.
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As you can see, the humus layer is relatively thin.
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Padding humus, which could come from humusation, makes sense since it's organic material that's in short supply.
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It could help regenerate soils in many places, both in forests and elsewhere.
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So it definitely has a practical use.
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I think the places where we spread the humus would probably have to be in less visited areas at first,
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like the Americans do it in a kind of sacred forest.
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But after that, the concept could be expanded to orchards for tall trees and later perhaps to gardens with small, high-yielding trees.
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Then you have both the soil being regenerated and food being produced,
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all the way to growing vegetables in open fields.
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However, it could take one, two or three generations for the concept of composting bodies bodies
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and using the resulting organic material for vegetable cultivation to become widely accepted.
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Look, you can do it in the nature.
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Yes, I have one in my shop.
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Oh, you know what it is.
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It's good.
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Yes, it's really cool.
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regulations are very strict
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and kind of I don't know they they they don't know very strict in Belgium they're very strict
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and sometimes it's nonsense you know like for the monuments yes
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that they have specific measures you can't even choose the kind
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of monument you want you can choose you can pick the color
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but that's it they force you to have like this one and then it must be like that much centimeters, that much thickness, it's just ridiculous.
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Everything is possible here in Holland.
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Yeah, that's why we came here.
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That's why we wanted to see here.
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Here are the coffins.
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They're all without nails or screws.
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That was well known, without metal.
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Yes.
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Cool.
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This one has here inside.
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Yes, okay.
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So how do you close it?
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No, that's the close.
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Ah, okay, you don't close it more than that in Belgium.
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I'm not sure it's allowed.
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We must be able to close the coffin.
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So we'll put glue or screws.
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Yeah, I know.
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To the people at home.
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Yes, yes, that's why I want to buy it.
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I need that for church, for everything.
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Because the things we have are just ugly.
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This one is also for the Natuurbegraafplaats.
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Yeah, with the...
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Oh, it's really pretty.
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Yes, it's easy to clean.
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And look, it's easy to lift and slide off.
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I think I must choose between this one and this one.
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It's just a must thing, because that one would be not as easy to clean.
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No, this one not.
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To clean, it won't be easy.
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OK.
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You like this one at first?
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Yes.
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Yes, yes, this one can fit on it after.
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What makes composting special is that it's both useful and comforting.
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It's useful because it returns organic material to the earth, and it's comforting because it answers many sociological, anthropological and psychological questions.
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It could help us come to terms with the death.
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Grief is a profound process that sometimes lasts a lifetime, a very complex matter.
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This method has the advantage of making this phase a little easier.
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I think it's important to thank these animals for giving their lives for our tests
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so that policymakers will finally take an interest in our proposal.
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I propose that we observe a minute of silence and express our gratitude together for this sacrifice.
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Hello.
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The rain boots with the dress.
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It's sexy, isn't it?
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That wasn't the plan.
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Watch out.
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That's it.
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That's going in there.
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I'm tying a knot that we can untie later.
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Wait a second.
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Let's pay a little attention to aesthetics.
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If we're doing this with people, the board has to be at the same height as the hill.
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We're not doing this on a slope, are we?
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Right.
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Thank you.
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We need a different plot.
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If I use these supports, the board sits a little lower.
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The ground isn't very stable.
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One, two, three.
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When someone dies, you have to take them to a place that looks professional.
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People shouldn't get the impression that we're standing around in straw hats and holding pitchforks, piling up bodies.
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That's not going to work.
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One, two, three.
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It's not perfect what we do.
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What we're doing is not working.
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We're doing developed yet.
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But at least we're taking matters into our own hands.
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We're not standing on the sidelines watching and wondering where this is all going.
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We're taking action and giving it a try.
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It's not perfect, okay, but I'm convinced that eventually we'll be able to answer the questions that are being raised.
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people will be ready for it eventually.
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Look, the Eiffel Tower.
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Interest in human composting is also growing in France.
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Some members of parliament have put the issue on the agenda.
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They've invited various representatives from the funeral industry to hear their perspectives.
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French funeral regulations are very strict.
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And what about the location for the ceremony, the service, the arrangements?
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It's hard to imagine everyone holding burials in their own backyards.
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These new ecological alternatives aim to satisfy the need for greater environmental sustainability, whether for ideological or personal reasons.
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But should this come at the expense of the bereaved?
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We should be careful to avoid traumatic experiences of grief,
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particularly through new technologies whose psychological effects on the bereaved have not been sufficiently studied.
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Thank you.
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Please, you have the floor.
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I've heard many questions regarding funeral homes.
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This is where your creativity comes into play.
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Because with humization, there isn't just one phase of support for the family.
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There are three phases.
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First, there's the funeral.
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After three or four months, the mound is moved and refilled.
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That's the second phase.
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And then, after a year, you have the humus and a third occasion for the family to gather.
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After a year, they will have found a little more peace.
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Humusation is so interesting because the body gradually returns to nature.
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Thank you very much.
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I see there are many questions about rituals, families and their needs, needs, which is reassuring because we already have answers to many of them.
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We're not promoting humization and then waiting for people to ask questions.
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We're looking into it because people are already asking for alternatives.
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I'm not sure if the time is right for this yet, but all the considerations and preparations that can be made in advance could be useful.
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As far as death is concerned, we in France are currently facing a debate on the topic of euthanasia.
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You're a little late on that one.
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We even have an answer for that.
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We have answers to all your questions.
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It's just like euthanasia, which you're debating in France.
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When you see how many people want it to be legally regulated, I don't understand why not.
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It's allowed in Belgium.
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Just recently I received a call regarding a death.
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A woman was fortunate enough to be allowed to receive assisted dying at home, surrounded by her family.
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Thank you very much and I hope to see you soon.
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The Humo Sapiens Association, which I helped found, is all about the continuation of life in a different form.
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I really like that.
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Now we have to convince people of its value.
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But I don't see how anyone could deny us this principle of the continuity of life for very long.
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There's a certain reticence when it comes to talking about human composting.
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People often don't know how it works and don't want to know either.
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We could explain it to them.
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You collect the remaining bone fragments and grind them up.
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It doesn't exactly sound poetic.
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Undertakers are reluctant to talk about it.
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They don't want to scare people.
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Obviously, I would choose it for myself, provided we get the approval.
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I hope we get it in time.
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I'd like the compost to go to my children.
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They'll then decide the best way to plant the tree.
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Maybe three friends from my generation will join in too.
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Then we'd have our own little forest.
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We made a small forest among us.
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Until very recently, the only options in Germany were burial and cremation.
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In one of Germany's northernmost federal states, an exception was made and a private company obtained permission to pilot human composting indoors.
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Hello.
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This is the cocoon.
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This is the special casket where the transformation takes place.
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Okay.
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And we bed the person on a bed of hay and straw.
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And you can see there are some flowers in there as well.
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And then we cover them with a blanket of hay and straw as well.
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So the process that we are doing is fully controlled or done by the microbes or microorganisms.
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Yes, okay.
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And they are usually present within your body.
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Okay.
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So you have them in your guts, in your intestines, while you're alive.
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They digest your food.
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That's your job.
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That's their job.
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And when you die, one part of their job then becomes to digest your body into soil.
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So what they do is when they digest the body as well, the temperature in the cocoon rises to more than 70 degrees.
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And then it takes only a very short time of about 40 days for the body to be transformed into soil.
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Okay.
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This is the cocoon?
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Exactly.
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So you put that cocoon in there?
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This is the bottom part of the cocoon and then we have a lid and we close it.
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And you have tubes or something for the air?
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Well, there's actually two tubes on there.
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One for the air inlet and one for the outlet.
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The only thing that we supply during those 40 days, once the cocoon is closed, it's closed.
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Usually, talking about death is dark, you talk like...
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And it's like a full end.
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Nothing happens after.
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And sometimes that's what people find scary, is the fact that there is nothing after.
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I get that, I totally get that.
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The totally emptiness.
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So yeah, that's good to give life to death.
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Yeah, exactly.
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When we first had the idea, the first thing we did is we talked to different moral ethic instances.
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The church...
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You had to speak with the church?
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Well, we chose to.
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You chose to?
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We chose to because we wanted to figure out if we would introduce something like that, how would society react in Germany? Of course.
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Important question.
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And the overall result was amazing.
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Everybody was supporting.
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Of course there were questions about how does the process really work and whatever, but the general idea has been accepted everywhere and everybody just liked it.
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And then we started developing the process.
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We were shown the mechanism on site, since the process here takes place indoors using computers and a metal rocker arm.
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It looked complex and simple at the same time.
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Meine Erde is a private company.
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They protect their project.
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So of course we weren't allowed to film the mechanism they developed.
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And so how does it work?
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I put the flowers already?
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Yeah, put the flowers on her and this is for example how it would look like when the family comes.
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You would have prepared it like that.
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Then you do a farewell ceremony here.
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What we could also do is offer you additional bedding so the family itself can cover the person.
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Oh, that's great.
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And I mean, it just smells so wonderful.
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Yeah, it smells like when I had a rabbit.
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Since you began that process, how many people did you transform?
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We started in a pilot phase because it's a new thing, of course, here in Germany as well.
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So we started carefully with one cocoon only, and now we're at three, and we hope to be able to increase the number of cocoons because so many people want it.
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But for now it's been 13 people that has been transformed successfully.
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And so did you have bodies with real heavy medical treatments like chemo, etc., and you have good results on that?
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We have good results with that.
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We were, of course, careful at the beginning, if that would work or not.
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But we could see that with all medical residues, also with chemotherapy, not only does the process work,
433
but we see that the residue is really like going on very low levels, and that you only see like fragments of that.
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That is something that we are doing more and more research because there are so many different medications that you can get.
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But still, as the original idea of chemotherapy is basically to stop and kill a lot of things,
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we can still say that the process of the transformation still works.
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We take the new soil out of the cocoon, we grind it because the bones still remain, and bring it to the gravesite.
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In Germany, by law, we have to bury the new soil, that's how we call it.
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And we bury it without a casket, just in a gravesite.
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You have to bury this good, beautiful soil just like you'd bury the corpse.
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That's complete nonsense.
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But we see that it's a legal issue.
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With laws, it usually takes the longest for anything to change.
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So this in itself is progress.
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In the US, new players are emerging in the funeral industry around what supporters call a third burial option.
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They are gathering for the second international conference on human composting, or what some call natural organic reduction.
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I'd like to introduce you to Pablo Metz out of Germany.
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Pablo, thank you so much for being here.
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We're now at the point that we have moral ethical statements from both the Protestant and the Catholic Church
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supporting the idea of natural organic reduction in Germany.
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And we even got to the point
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that the Catholic Church says they would always prefer a natural organic reduction to a cremation.
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And it got even better.
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We rented an unused chapel of the Protestant Church and remodeled it from the inside.
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And that's where we had our first vessels.
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Of course, from a German perspective, we would love to be allowed to give the soil to the families,
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parts or everything, but we're not allowed to do that yet.
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It was first legalized in the U.S in 2019 in the state of Washington.
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Others followed suit.
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It's a growing movement and more states are expected to follow.
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We have 74 vessels all around us.
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All of them are plugged into an air moving system we call octopus.
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And families come here absolutely all the time.
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If you look above your head, that's where the air moves.
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All the air runs through the facility and out the back.
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Let's start with where we screwed up and then hopefully where we got better.
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John had us really beautifully set and designed to do the function that we were designed to do.
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We take a human body, we transform it into soil, we have ethics and love and process that undergird that, and that was great.
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But we didn't understand the family experience.
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And so, let's see, Katie, is there a good vessel?
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What are you trying to show us?
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Oh, yeah, like the one with the toys on it?
473
Yeah, here we go.
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So, I never thought that when we lose a child, they would put their toys and everything on it so the folks could be there.
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So originally, if you think of it, right, we have all of these racks, all these vessels, and it looks like Costco.
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families are coming in and it just didn't feel very good but i never believed they'd come in and
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so people would come in there'd be one guy he'd have
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two cups of coffee he's like i've lost my wife i've always had coffee with her
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and i'm having a terrible morning
480
could i have one coffee for her one for me
481
and could i have an hour you know and brie
482
and katie are like of course you know
483
and i'm like holy cow like this is bananas um and so this organically happened.
484
John, we didn't design these to be decorated or anything.
485
Did you ever even conceive of that when that was happening?
486
I did.
487
Oh good.
488
Thanks for telling me.
489
I'll check my emails.
490
Turn your head and look behind the screen there and you'll see all the soil that we give.
491
That is the full amount.
492
That's 250 pounds.
493
And then a lot of our people here might use small bags here.
494
And those are small amounts, all burlap.
495
Okay, so we're going to go back a house, no photography at all and we're going to do flow a body.
496
Again no photography or filming in this back area please.
497
All these families are so gracious and generous to share their experience with us today
498
so we can learn more about this process from the client family perspective.
499
Hi my name is Eileen this is such a great conference.
500
I hold it together.
501
We lost our son Fritz.
502
He was 18.
503
Unexpectedly.
504
Brief illness.
505
And I had heard, like, right when probably the Washington State Legislature passed natural organic reduction as a law in Washington,
506
I'd heard a report on NPR.
507
And so I told my husband about it, and he thought it was great.
508
And then at dinner, we told our son Fritz about it, you know, telling him, he was probably 16,
509
17 at the time, that this is what we would want when our time comes, right?
510
Little did we know that it would be the other way around.
511
But he thought it was great.
512
And you know what?
513
My feeling is that the younger generation is all in on this carbon capturing.
514
after my husband died one of my very first thoughts is
515
there's no way i could plan a funeral in the next like three days like how do people even do
516
that so natural reduction just seemed literally the most natural decision making to do
517
so andy was the fifth person composted in in the state of Colorado.
518
So we had mason jars of Andy's soil
519
that we provided for our guests and our friends to take home with them
520
because we wanted to share him with people too.
521
So that was part of the decision making too, so.
522
And having that ability to share the soil, that was huge for us.
523
I mean, you know, he's on Mount Fuji and he's in Iceland, he's in Cyprus, and he's, you know, he's in Maui and he's on my friend's front porch in her flower basket.
524
People really, really responded.
525
The soil was more approachable than ashes, I think.
526
So having enough, like with ashes, you don't have very much, but soil you have enough to give everyone who wants a little bag.
527
And we gave some people with bigger gardens, like a bigger bag.
528
And it was, that was healing and still is to this day.
529
Hi.
530
Well, it's five months today, so this process has helped slow down what was so sudden.
531
Taking the tour of Return Home when they said that we'll have a QR code, you know, it was like, ding, ding, ding.
532
We just heard our brother say, how cool, I have a QR code, because, I mean, he He came out with hands on a keyboard.
533
And so that was just very cool.
534
And that, you know, we could stream the service, and just all of it had this tech portion of it,
535
but it also was just very reverent at where it needed to be.
536
And it was, I don't know,
537
It felt very spiritual without being religious for people that aren't that way.
538
We're just waiting, and it's kind of nice to be waiting.
539
We know it's there, and we could go see him, and we still can.
540
He's still cooking a little bit, so we're being.
541
And, you know, when we do get that soil, we're not exactly sure how it's all going to go.
542
I know I'm going to take some home to Lewiston, Idaho, where we live.
543
It was just beautiful.
544
It was great.
545
It was really great.
546
There I go.
547
That's beautiful.
548
Thank you very much.
549
The company Recompose opened the first human composting facility in Seattle in 2020.
550
The moss wall and the plants, of course, are just to constantly be reminding folks that this is a funeral home,
551
but it's a very different type of funeral home.
552
Since it opened, more than 600 people have been transformed here.
553
Wow, I like the candles on the wall.
554
Yeah, thank you.
555
This is a doorway from this space of ceremony and memory and spending time together into the greenhouse,
556
which is where the act of composting happens.
557
So basically any organic materials that get placed on the body are kind of part of that final farewell.
558
And then at the end of the service, our team opens the door and places the body inside.
559
So this is the greenhouse, we call it.
560
Ah, the wall.
561
The wall.
562
We have a total of 33 composting vessels on site.
563
I think many of them, almost all of them are full at the moment.
564
We have space for 54.
565
So as we get busier month over month, we'll be able to install more vessels.
566
The idea was to have a system that was replicable and somewhat scalable so that
567
my dream is that eventually we're the default instead of cremation.
568
That's a 30-year dream, I like to say, but yeah.
569
We kind of are careful about the intellectual property that's gone into the design of these vessels
570
so um yeah there are many people trying to compose in their own way yeah um
571
and sometimes we feel like we we're really at the beginning of something
572
and so everything doesn't seem to be you know 100 set up
573
so is your technique for you perfect and you won't change a thing or or there are still some things?
574
I was crazy enough to try to do it first.
575
So I feel like our composting system, this system you're seeing here is so refined and we're really proud of the way it works.
576
I think we should have all the ways, if people want to be composted slowly outdoors, that's great.
577
It doesn't solve for me, which was the initial design question,
578
which is how are we going to create an ecological death care option for people in cities?
579
So I started with that question.
580
And you know, going outside to the forest somewhere that's not a city, that's not something you can do with billions of people,
581
composting in vessel and fairly quickly in a couple of months is something that could be scalable.
582
People are going to be dead for a long time, and so it's a matter of doing it right rather than doing it fast.
583
We're just not in a hurry.
584
It's incredible to see what's already out there.
585
We inspire each other and we're all working toward the same goal.
586
Given this trend, I'm firmly convinced that human composting will soon become a reality in Belgium.
587
I know that I'll be composted when I die.
588
A movement is gradually taking shape.
589
In Belgium, humization remains in the scientific testing phase.
590
At the same time, other ecological concepts and initiatives are emerging.
591
In France, a research program led by the universities of Lille and Bordeaux was launched in April 2024.
592
In Germany, the pilot phase was successfully completed in June 2026.
593
Since then, human composting has been legally permitted in the state of Schleswig-Holstein.
594
Across Europe, there are an increasing number of organizations advocating to have human composting recognized as a form of burial.
595
They'd like to see our bodies turned into soil, our graves into trees, and our cemeteries into forests.
596
The End
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Vocabulario y notas de pronunciación para esta lección
Esta lección de conversación de nivel B2 se basa en el vídeo “Eco-burial - Would you consider being composted?”. Este vídeo tiene 596 frases y 5939 palabras para practicar shadowing. La parte hablada dura 50:26. El hablante mantiene un ritmo constante de unas 118 palabras por minuto, cómodo para el shadowing. El 84 % de las palabras está entre las 3.000 más comunes del inglés; conviene repasar el resto antes de empezar.
Vocabulario clave de este vídeo
Las 15 palabras más avanzadas del vídeo, con su pronunciación y significado:
| Palabra | Pronunciación | Significado |
|---|---|---|
| compost sustantivo | /ˈkɑm.poʊst/ | compost |
| burial sustantivo | /ˈbɛɹi.əl/ | entierro, soterramiento |
| cocoon sustantivo | /kəˈkuːn/ | capullo, capillo |
| hummus sustantivo | /ˈhʊməs/ | hummus |
| cremation sustantivo | /kɹɪˈmeɪʃən/ | cremación |
| bury verbo | /ˈbɛɹi/ | enterrar |
| mound sustantivo | /maʊnd/ | montículo |
| transform verbo | /tɹænsˈfɔɹm/ | trasformar, transformar |
| ash sustantivo | /ˈæʃ/ | ceniza, favila |
| microorganism sustantivo | /ˌmaɪ.kɹoʊˈɔɹ.ɡəˌnɪz.m̩/ | microorganismo |
| digest verbo | /daɪˈd͡ʒɛst/ | digerir |
| ecological adjetivo | /ˌiːkəˈlɒd͡ʒɪkl̩/ | ecológico |
| coffin sustantivo | /ˈkɔfɪn/ | ataúd, féretro |
| straw sustantivo | /stɹɔ/ | paja |
| grief sustantivo | /ɡɹiːf/ | pesar, pesadumbre |
Phrasal verbs que vas a escuchar
| Palabra | Significado |
|---|---|
| figure out verbo | averiguar, captar |
| watch out | cuidado, ojo |
| break down verbo | descomponerse, averiarse |
| hand over verbo | devolver, entregar |
| pile up verbo | arrumar, apilar |
| run through verbo | resumir |
| slow down verbo | desacelerar, decelerar |
| sort out verbo | discernir |
Frases que vale la pena repetir
Frases cortas y completas del vídeo que puedes reutilizar en la conversación diaria:
- What more do you want us to do?
- How can you believe that we wouldn't follow the guidelines?
- Do you exhume the remains?
- What kind of flowers do you have?
- We're not doing this on a slope, are we?
Gramática en este vídeo
Las estructuras que más usa el hablante, con las palabras exactas del vídeo:
| Estructura | En el vídeo |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + participio pasado — una acción pasada que sigue importando ahora | has never happened · have launched · have donated |
| Voz pasiva be + participio pasado — importa lo que ocurre, no quién lo hace | must be treated · be monitored · be carried |
| Oraciones de relativo who / which + oración — información extra sobre una persona o cosa | needs, which is · everyone who wants |
Pronunciación a tener en cuenta
El hablante usa 143 contracciones y formas reducidas, como we're, don't, I'm. Dilas en su forma corta, tal como las oyes.
- Los sonidos de “th”: authorize /ˈɔθəɹaɪz/, euthanasia /juː.θəˈneɪ.zi.ə/, chemotherapy /ˌkiːməʊˈθɛɹəpi/, ethics /ˈɛθ.ɪks/
- Los sonidos de “sh” y “zh”: cremation /kɹɪˈmeɪʃən/, ash /ˈæʃ/, decomposition /diːˌkɒmpəˈzɪʃən/, revolutionary /ˌɹɛvəˈluʃənɛɹi/, conscious /ˈkɑn.ʃəs/
- Palabras largas — cuida el acento: cemetery /ˈsɛm.ɪˌtɛɹ.i/, microorganism /ˌmaɪ.kɹoʊˈɔɹ.ɡəˌnɪz.m̩/, ecological /ˌiːkəˈlɒd͡ʒɪkl̩/, decomposition /diːˌkɒmpəˈzɪʃən/, euthanasia /juː.θəˈneɪ.zi.ə/
Sonidos difíciles para hispanohablantes:
- s + consonante al inicio — sin añadir una “e” delante: straw /stɹɔ/, scalable /ˈskeɪ.lə.bl̩/
- /v/ — no es /b/: los dientes tocan el labio inferior: bereave /bɪˈɹiv/, gravesite /ˈɡɹeɪvˌsaɪt/, vegetable /ˈvɛd͡ʒ.tə.bəl/, revolutionary /ˌɹɛvəˈluʃənɛɹi/
- /z/ — sonora, no /s/: microorganism /ˌmaɪ.kɹoʊˈɔɹ.ɡəˌnɪz.m̩/, authorize /ˈɔθəɹaɪz/, decomposition /diːˌkɒmpəˈzɪʃən/, euthanasia /juː.θəˈneɪ.zi.ə/, indoors /ɪnˈdɔɹz/
Cómo practicar con este vídeo
- Escucha el vídeo entero una vez sin hablar y anota las palabras que no conoces.
- Haz shadowing frase por frase a velocidad normal, repitiendo cada una hasta que tu ritmo coincida con el del hablante.
- Grábate y compara con el original, prestando atención a palabras como compost, burial, cocoon.
¿Qué es la Técnica de Shadowing?
Shadowing es una técnica de aprendizaje de idiomas respaldada por la ciencia, desarrollada originalmente para la formación de intérpretes profesionales y popularizada por el políglota Dr. Alexander Arguelles. El método es simple pero poderoso: escuchas audio en inglés nativo y lo repites en voz alta de inmediato, como una sombra que sigue al hablante con solo 1-2 segundos de retraso. A diferencia de la escucha pasiva o los ejercicios de gramática, el shadowing obliga a tu cerebro y músculos de la boca a procesar y reproducir simultáneamente patrones de habla reales. Las investigaciones muestran que mejora significativamente la precisión de la pronunciación, la entonación, el ritmo, el habla conectada, la comprensión auditiva y la fluidez al hablar, convirtiéndola en una de las metodologías más efectivas para la preparación del IELTS Speaking y la comunicación en inglés en el mundo real.