If your dying wish is to have someone write your biography — with your own ashes — then you’re in luck, sort of. One product designer Nadine Jarvis is creating pencils from the carbon of human cremains: “240 pencils can be made from an average body of ash – a lifetime supply of pencils for those left behind.” (via Utne)

That option may go over well with literary types scribbling in the basement, but outdoorsy people have their option too! How about having your cremains mixed with bird food to create a bird feeder? Writes Nadine: “The person is reincarnated through the life of the bird.”

Those and more are part of Nadine’s Post Mortem research project: “My motivation for this project was my interest in the death and decomposition of materials and how the degradation of materials could be used to aid the grieving process.”

Fascinating! And with a slight eco-twist too — why waste body-carbon when the next Michael Pollan can use it to pen the Eco-Mortal’s Dilemma?

Ashes to pencils, dust to bird feed…. For more slightly morbid environmentalism, here’s my post on eco-coffins.

Images via nadinejarvis.com

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