It's People! It's Made From People......!

Ahem...yes...well, after the histrionics of the title and all that.  I came across a mildly macabre news item in the BBC News via Boing Boing.  It concerned the harvesting and recycling of medical metal.  Right off I thought of Soylent Green starring Charlton Heston and the horrific short story -  "We Honor Those We Serve by Steve Singleman". (If you haven't enjoyed this little slice, sorry, of crazy, check out episode 283 of Beam Me Up at Beammeuppodcast.com)  It seems that a Dutch company called OrthoMetals which recycles metal implants from cremated human bodies.  Nope, not kidding.  With the pinch on for metals, any source can reap, again sorry, a healthy profit.

From the article:

• the company recycles more than 250 tons of metal from cremations annually, which gets used to make things like cars, planes, and even wind turbines.

At approximately $8 a pound for just medical grade titanium can net about 4 million dollars alone annually for what used to be discarded.  Since the metal is procured for all intents free of cost,  the proceeds are almost 100% profit even when 70-75% of the proceeds are returned to the crematoria, for spending on charitable projects.

Not science fiction in and of itself, but you can see how something that was considered so very alien and horrific is now solid business practices and a win win for the environment.    The dodah man was right!