Susanne Duijvestein

From Pest to Soil

Humusating a Muskrat

Maybe you have heard about the Muskrat, an ‘invasive exotic’ that likes to chomp on 'our' Dutch dykes. It was on the 22nd of May that one found their final resting place in one of the grow beds at Mediamatic Biotoop.

After a lecture where we asked ourselves what if after this life one can be food for a new life? Not as reincarnation, but in a way that you become part of nature again. That you quite literally become food for the plants, trees, microorganisms and other animals?

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Speakers burying a muskrat, to be composted over the upcoming few months - JungJiea Hung

In April 2019 the state of Washington passed a bill to allow humusation: an alternative to burial and cremation, where the body is composted into fertile humus. Experiments on this method are also taking place in Belgium, and soon also here in Amsterdam.

Susanne Duijvestein has made it her personal mission to legalize this method in the Netherlands. We burn a lot of fossil fuels when we cremate a body and the way we bury people now makes no connection to nature what so ever. 

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