I would like to see the laws changed so people can be disposed of in an environmentally responsible way. Archaic social customs of burial and the risk of disease are things of a bygone era.

I personally find the whole idea of being embalmed/mummified and even cremated to be an incredible waste of energy and resources.

I would like to be buried in an untreated cardboard or fibreboard casket without anything done to my body, apart from refrigeration, until I am interred.

Cremation, while saving land, is an incredible waste of energy and emits a lot of greenhouse gas. Ever thought how much energy it takes to reduce the human body to ash? How much carbon that would emit? I don’t want that on my conscience.

I think the embalming of a human body and burying it in a metal casket with headstone, etc, to also be incredibly wasteful and a financial burden on the surviving family. Cemeteries are an incredible waste of land.

Let’s recycle ourselves and return our bodies to the land. This would probably require some sort of legislation.

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We need to find a new model for paying utility companies that doesn't reward them for producing more. Pay them a fixed fee per household served, maybe, or per person plus per square metre of garden. And, to motivate the consumer, maybe a tax on usage over the average which is paid to an independently administered fund for research into alternatives and usage reduction. But how to charge businesses?

Kenneth Davidson in The Age was spot on yesterday, when he described a water utility's response to saving water by lowering the pressure - the utility initially said it was an effective strategy, and then rescinded that message almost immediately (presumably when they realised it might be too effective, and they'd lose income!)
If it was in the interest of electricity companies to save electricity rather than produce more, they'd be interested in providing free compact fluorescent globes. and researching LED and other alternatives, to save putting in new power stations.

As much as I hate the complexity of phone bills these days, the phone companies have at least developed different models of charging that better reflect their constraints.

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How about we explore the concept of vertical farming? The name really says it all.
Instead of having a 30 hectare plot for a farm, for example, we could have a half hectare plot 60 stories tall.
The advantages are numerous:
- The same volume of product can be produced in a much smaller space
- All the land that was once cleared for farming can return to native vegetation
- With solar power the v. farms will be a net carbon sink
- The enclosed green house environment will mean no herbicides or pesticides will be needed
- As a by-product of the above point this could improve the health of the community
- All the farm-boys (and girls) coming city bound will feel useful again
- The farm can purify the city’s grey waste water (drought proofing the country??)
- It can help decentralise the economy
- A v. farm could sit right above a super-market (fresh food straight to the consumers)
- A vertical farm would look freaking awesome!

So the advantages are pretty clear and that's just the start. And we wouldn’t need any major technological breakthroughs to accomplish this. The only problem I can really think of is cost and profitability. Although, I’d say, in the long term these things could really turn a profit for major supermarkets what with $0pa in freight costs and carbon credits, etc…

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