Dying is Forever: Swiss Company Turns Cremated Remains Into Diamonds

Algordanza is turning the notion of “family heirloom” on its head. The Swiss startup takes cremated human remains and transforms them into diamonds. The concept isn’t as outlandish as you might think. Diamonds, after all, are little more than pressurized carbon atoms that have been baked and squeezed beneath the earth’s mantle under extreme pressure and heat for thousands, if not millions, of years. Human bodies, conveniently enough, are roughly 18 percent carbon. Rinaldo Willy, who founded Algordanza a decade ago, uses a process not unlike the one lab technicians use to grow synthetic diamonds. In fact, Algordanza claims its so-called “memorial diamonds” are comparable in quality to—and in fact almost indistinguishable from—their non-human-derived counterparts.



[link to www.ecouterre.com]