If you don’t want a bit of ground dedicated to your corpse’s exclusive use, then the best bet is cremation and scattering.
It’s more like a bit of people jerky. The freeze-drying process extracts moisture and cures the tissue just like making jerky. But yeah, not exactly “mulch” as you would expect it.
Not exactly, as jerky is only the lean muscle tissue and is salted to assist with curing - freeze drying isn’t really anything like curing.
In any case, even if you were to grind jerky to powder and add water, it would rehydrate into something resembling pulped meat (and this would be prone to going stinky and rotten from there on)
Point is, I don’t think there will be a great deal of functional difference between sprinkling a freeze dried powdered body across X square metres of forest floor vs feeding a fresh body through a wood chipper and spraying the same area with wet hamburger.
How messy your hands and clothing get?
Yeah, there is that, but think of the energy you’d save if you don’t have to freeze dry the corpse.
The list for Duke doesn’t seem so bad, but I don’t know your medical history or the gruesome way you plan to die:
[ul]
[li]If we accept we must have the body within 3 days of death[/li][li] No autopsy on body[/li][li] The body must be blood contaminant and staph infection free (i.e., MRSA, Hepatitis, Sepsis, HIV)[/li][li] Condition of body (no recent surgeries where the body hasn’t healed)[/li][li] Weight for Men not over 200 but not below 100 (this is handled on a case by case basis)[/li][li] Weight for Women not over 180 but not below 100 (this is handled on a case by case basis)[/li][li] Body was not in medical isolation[/li][li] Organs (except for eyes) have not been removed at the time of death[/li][li] No jaundice[/li][li] The body has not been badly damaged by accident, suicide, or very invasive surgery, making it unsuitable for anatomical study[/li][li] Height under 6’4"[/li][li] There is no age requirement[/li][/ul]
My grandmother’s body went to McGill University in October of last year. She was over 90, and had a stroke, seizures, and a host of other medical issues before her passing, and the university was still grateful for the donation. She wanted her “old carcass” to go to good use after she was gone, and I think she did a great job.
Soylent Green is people!
[quote=“Antigen, post:25, topic:666666”]
[li] Weight for Men not over 200 but not below 100 (this is handled on a case by case basis)[/li][/QUOTE]
Sorry, it has been a while since I looked. The one I’ve quote here would be my strike from that list. Anything that caused me to be under 200 lbs by the time I went to them would disqualify me under some other element (i.e., I’d have been gutted, lost my entire body below the waist, etc.)
Corporations are people!
(Doesn’t that mean that Soylent Green is corporations? Or that corporations are Soylent Green?)
In my state (Maryland) there is no charge for donating your body to science. My mom died about two weeks ago and we just went throught this. There is literally one sheet of paper to fill out (ahead of time) and then all we had to do was make a phone call. Pretty much as easy as ordering a pizza. They sent someone out to pick up her body and that was it. No funeral fees, casket, burial plot (you can have the ashes returned after they are done if you like), or anything of the sort. We had a memorial service at my house.
The program is run through the anatomy board of maryland. The basically rent out the bodies to whoever needs them. I think of it as the free market at work :).
I didn’t mean to pry into your medical history or anything. Sorry if I was nosy! I just figured I’d list some of the requirements in case anyone else comes across this thread, thinking about body donation. It’s actually a pretty simple process and they take almost anyone who’s in good enough shape to be a teaching specimen and who isn’t full of communicable diseases. The height/weight requirement is there because it’s not easy to lug a cadaver around even when it’s skinny!
Also, I hope you have a whole bunch more years left before any of this even becomes an issue. 
I’ll believe a corporation is a person when Texas executes one.
Perfectly valid, no apologies necessary!
From the movie “The Outlaw Josey Wales”
When the kid from Alabama asked Josey about burying the guys that he had just shot and killed.
<Josey Wales> “Hell with them fellas. Buzzards gotta eat, same as worms.”