This TED Talk features inventor, designer, and death care advocate, Katrina Spade, recorded live at TEDx Orcus Island, 2016.

My name is Katrina Spade, and I grew up in a medical family where it was fairly normal to talk about death and dying at the dinner table.

But I didn't go into medicine like so many of my family members. Instead, I went to architecture school to learn how to design.

And while I was there, I began to be curious about what would happen to my physical body after I died.

What would my nearest and dearest do with me?

So if the existence and the fact of your own mortality doesn't get you down,

the state of our current funerary practices will.

Today, almost 50% of Americans choose conventional burial.

Conventional burial begins with embalming

where funeral staff drain bodily fluid

and replace it with a mixture designed to preserve the corpse

and give it a lifelike glow.

Then, as you know, bodies are buried in a casket, in a concrete-line grave, in a cemetery.

All told, in U.S. cemeteries, we bury enough metal to build a Golden Gate Bridge,

enough wood to build 1,800 single-family homes,

and enough formaldehyde-laden in bombing fluid to fill eight Olympic-sized swimming pools.

In addition, cemeteries all over the world are reaching capacity.

Turns out, it doesn't really make good business sense

to sell someone a piece of land for eternity.

Whose idea was that?

In some places, you can't buy a plot no matter how much money you have.

As a result, cremation rates have risen fast.

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