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!      

Biodiesel from liposuctioned human ass-fat powers race boat

Is it science fiction? Welll no. But it does show that Beam Me Up has an honest interest in the environment...... plus who wouldn't jump at the chance to say ass fat!

Thanks to Cory Doctorow's Boing Boing blog for this!

Here's some video from a Current TV segment about a biodiesel boat race to circumnavigate the globe. The boat featured in the video runs on a mixture of fuel from various sources -- 4 gallons of the stuff was produced from liposuctioned butt blubber (a hundred grams of that came from the captain's own backside).

(AAAAAhhh ya gota love them renewable resources!!!! Plus if you look around you will see that there is damn near an inexhaustible supply!!! pac)