Thus, people who have moved to another world will be able to pay their last debt to the state.
There are innovative technologies that cause some confusion. The know-how recently applied by two Swiss crematoria is one of them. In September this year, the largest crematorium in the Alpine Republic of Nordheim, located in Zurich, installed an unusual filtration system. A special machine selects from the ashes of citizens who have finished their earthly journey, precious metals: gold, silver, platinum … Despite the fact that the heat in the furnaces reaches 700 degrees Celsius, precious metals can withstand much higher temperatures. For example, the melting point of silver is 961.8 ° C, and gold melts at 1064 ° C. Mostly after cremation, artificial teeth remain. But among the exhibits of the Nordheim Museum (the crematorium has been operating since 1889 and has seen everything) there is a pair of surgical scissors,forgotten by a mistake by aesculapians in the insides of patients Scissors, of course, have no commercial value …
“Before the cremation process, we ask the relatives if they agree with us filtering out precious metals from the ashes,” says the head of the municipal burial office Rolf Steinmann. - As the practice of the first month of work shows, only a third of our clients give permission for this procedure. In other cases, we return the ashes of the deceased to the relatives in full.
The average "throughput" of this ritual enterprise is 6500 cremations per year. Even a third of this amount looks impressive. The resulting metal is sold to processing companies, all profits from the venture will go to the state. The organizers of the project calculated that this method of "extraction" of minerals would annually bring income to the city treasury of Zurich in the amount of 100 thousand Swiss francs (this is approximately 101 250 US dollars).
For the first time, a similar project was launched in Switzerland in 2013 in the city of Solothurn. The population there is about 15 thousand people (for comparison, about 400 thousand live in Zurich) and in five years, since the introduction of the filtration system, the revenues to the budget of Solothurn amounted to 40 thousand Swiss francs ($ 40 500).
As you know, money doesn't smell. But this idea evokes too dark associations. The last time the idea of disassembling the dead for parts seemed to have occurred to people who ended up on the bench of the Nuremberg Tribunal. Household people and effective managers who are able to extract money even from ashes and decay are always in value. But there are times when you want to stay away from such strong business executives. Just in case.
YAROSLAV KOROBATOV