Your gnomes shouldn’t be dead, they’re technically immortal and a stint in the dishwasher is their ticket out of the salt mines. If you’ve got dead gnomes the last thing you want is to keep their bodies on the premises. If you leave them in the cartridge they can be revived when you exchange it for the new cartridge. If you put them in the ground they will find… other ways back to their realm, and they will remember what you did.

Also don’t ask me why the gnome salt mine slavery exists, I didn’t create it, I just benefit from it.