Human composting turns death into an opportunity to help the planet heal.
A natural burial is good for the planet and lets you be reborn as a part of nature
By HONORAH BROZIO
When someone dies, they can be put in the ground or an urn — but many are unaware that there is an alternative that returns the body to the earth in a natural way. Instead of traditional burial or cremation, there is human composting, which honors the natural cycle of life and creates a memorial specific to our loved ones without harming the earth.
Human composting is a simple process that lays the body on a bed of wood chips, alfalfa and straw. The body decomposes and turns into fresh usable soil in five to seven weeks. According to the human composting facility, Recompose, one human turns into about one truck bed of soil which can be used for a garden, tree or even spread among a forest.
Why is human composting better than traditional embalming or cremation practices? It is important to consider the average postmortem process. One day a man named Body dies. Body hangs out with the mortician who pumps him full of embalming fluids, drains his blood, removes his organs and creates a chemically preserved thing that is not natural, not human and definitely not Body.
When I think about modern death practices I wonder, why do we ignore death when we can embrace it?
The work involved in the embalming process is not natural for a human to experience and it exposes the mortician to harmful chemicals. The National Funeral Directors Association claims that embalmers inhale high levels of formaldehyde and are at risk for coughing, nausea, facial irritation and, in some cases, leukemia.
After the preparation, Body’s family picks out a casket, plans a ceremony, buys enough flowers to start a flower shop and buys a plot of land. So, is it worth it? Is it worth it to expose morticians to harmful chemicals and waste resources for a process that attempts to slow decomposition and maintain a body that is no longer alive?
Modern funeral practices involve cement vaults and caskets in order to preserve our loved ones for as long as possible. We delay the decomposition process for about a decade so that our bodies resemble canned goods in the bottom of a cement bunker. We waste time, thousands of dollars and land all because we want to look at our loved ones and imagine they’re still alive. When I think about modern death practices I wonder, why do we ignore death when we can embrace it?
Human composting is the opposite of traditional burial. With human composting, our bodies replenish the earth, not take from it. The process allows us to be among the trees or a meadow where we will forever contribute to the circle of life.
The possibilities of soil are endless. When I die, I want to become a carrot patch. With human composting, you could be a lemon tree or a tulip garden, and your family could make a garden and sit under the shade of your tree.
You are not a preserved lump at the bottom of a cement vault or a pile of ashes on the mantel. Rather, you would nourish the roots of your favorite plant and your family would be with you, laying under the sun.
Each individual is capable of changing the way we see death. After all, America’s extravagant funeral practices and embalming methods are relatively modern. The Library of Congress associates America’s booming death care industry with the Civil War because families wanted their loved ones preserved and returned from war. Embalming remained popular after the success of President Abraham Lincoln’s embalmed body during his lavish funeral tour. If luxurious funerals and embalming were influenced by societal changes, I believe human composting can reach the same degree of acceptance someday.
Moreover, human composting is crucial to the future of our planet. In 2019, the Population Reference Bureau notes that roughly 3 million Americans died. Typically, more than half of the population chooses cremation and the rest choose traditional burial meaning millions of people harm the earth for funerals on an annual basis.
If luxurious funerals and embalming were influenced by societal changes, I believe human composting can reach the same degree of acceptance someday.
Recompose claimed on their website that: “Cremation burns fossil fuels and emits carbon dioxide … Conventional burial consumes valuable urban land, pollutes the soil, and contributes to climate change through resource-intensive manufacture and transport of caskets, headstones, and grave liners.”
Earth Funeral, a human composting company in New York, shared similar data claiming one cremation produces about 535 pounds of CO2. While cremation saves land resources, it usually involves burning embalmed bodies which releases toxic chemicals into the air.
Unfortunately, human composting is only legal in seven states including Washington state, Colorado, Oregon, Vermont, California, Nevada and New York. Even then, there are only a handful of human composting facilities in the country. Earth Funeral is accessible for people in New York, but if someone from Texas wanted to be composted they would have to transport the body all the way to a different state with a facility.
The U.S. needs to legalize human composting in all 50 states because everyone should have the option to decay. I find it ridiculous that America’s legal burial options harm the earth but natural decomposition is illegal in 43 states. We’re allowed to be preserved and burned but not returned to the earth. We’re allowed to kill the planet but not help it.
Everyone can help promote human composting. It’s easy to spread awareness by sharing websites such as Recompose or Earth Funeral with your friends and family. Additionally, you can follow Recompose’s legislative tracker, a resource that updates visitors on which states are in the process of legalizing human composting.
By destigmatizing environmentally friendly burial options, we can move away from harmful burial choices and make decomposition a common burial practice. Normalizing human composting starts with the small steps of educating our peers until the knowledge reaches the legislature. Instead of scarring the earth, we can return to it.
— The idea that death and dying can be part of life, not handled by walled-off specialists in expensive facilities, has gained traction in recent years.
Attendees of a recent shrouding workshop practice on a volunteer, led by Pat Quigley, right, the supervisor of Laurel Hill funeral home.
In a high-ceilinged, brick-walled space in Northern Liberties where people often host weddings, a group of strangers gathered on a recent Sunday to prepare for death.
They had come to learn how to shroud, part of a growing “death-positive” movement in Philly that seeks to demystify and de-commercialize the end of life. Many had been drawn to the hands-on workshop by fliers posted around the city that read, in part, “Yes, you heard that right! ‘Shroud’ as in wrapping a dead body for burial.”
Hosted at the MAAS building, the free event promised a shrouding demonstration (”on a live human”). It also served as the first meeting of a nascent “deathcare volunteer group,” which has aims to help Philadelphians who cannot afford funeral costs prepare and bury their loved ones. The median cost of funeral followed by burial in the mid-Atlantic region was $8,093 in 2021, according to the National Funeral Directors Association — a hefty sum for many families.
Pat Quigley, center and funeral director at Laurel Hill cemetery, teaches attendees how to shroud a dead body at a recent workshop in Northern Liberties. Kim Schmucki, on the table, volunteered to be practiced on.
“I really want Philadelphia to be a death-positive hub on the East Coast,” said Isabel Knight, 29, the president of the National Home Funeral Alliance and the workshop’s organizer. In her vision, the grassroots group will wash and shroud the dead for free, and perhaps even transport bodies, in personal vehicles with burial permits, to cemeteries, Knight said.
Of actual burial or cremation, “That’s something that you’ve got to pay for, unfortunately,” she said.
The idea that death and dying can be part of life, not handled by walled-off specialists in expensive facilities, has gained traction in recent years. And the attendees at the shrouding workshop were not, on the whole, new to death — they included death doulas, a hospice music therapy worker, and a former palliative care doctor.
It was a practical meeting, but also something of a pep rally for people whose passion may not be the most popular at cocktail parties.
“I do a meditation where I visualize dying — and sometimes being cared for, and sometimes just being kind of abandoned on a cliff and decomposing,” said Natalia Stroika, 38, of South Philly, explaining to the group why she had come. “I got a lot of wisdom from that.”
Another attendee, a West Philly resident who goes by the name Ask Nicely, explained that he was in the process of growing flax in a burial ground in Upper Darby “so that I can learn to process it into fiber and then weave my own death shroud,” a comment that elicited an appreciative murmur from the crowd.
Many Jewish communities already have a volunteer burial society, or chevra kadisha, to ritually wash and prepare the dead for burial. Knight’s deathcare group will be for all religions, and particularly for those who cannot afford the high costs of the modern funeral.
Attendees of a free shrouding workshop practice wrapping a volunteer in a sheet.
Pat Quigley, 66, the supervisor of Laurel Hill funeral home and a member of the Reconstructionist Chevra Kadisha, or Jewish burial society, served as the shrouding instructor. She first reassured the group on two fronts: dead bodies do not immediately become too stiff to handle, and they do not instantly decompose.
Next was the practical matter of what to do. Everyone crowded around a pale green massage table at the front of the room; Kim Schmucki, 60, removed her shoes, revealing multicolored striped socks, and lay on the table, pretending to be dead. The group used a white linen-cotton shroud made by California company Kinkaraco, which Laurel Hill sells for roughly $900. Kinkaraco makes shrouds for a “green burial,” which means that everything about the body, the clothes, and the casket (if there is one) is biodegradable.
“Obviously we’re not going to suffocate Kim,” Quigley said, showing attendees how to roll her over and pull the shroud around her, but declining to pull it over her face. She offered a few “nifty little tricks” to keep eyes and mouths closed, advised attendees to support the head during the process, and showed the group how to tie the shroud tightly around the feet, waist, and upper body.
After the main demonstration, participants broke into smaller groups to try themselves. On the floor, a group carefully wrapped their volunteer corpse in a pale green sheet and rolled her back and forth, tied up with a bow.
“The whole death experience, like the whole birth experience, has become so medicalized and so sanitized,” said Quigley. “I think people just want something different.”
A cemetery plot designated for green burial in Cherokee Township Cemetery near North San Juan, Calif.
By Paul Thornton
To get a sense of how progressive ideals don’t always reflect actual practice, try burying a dead relative in Southern California. You’ll find that even in this land where people talk about sustainability, saying farewell in an environmentally responsible manner is, for most people, nearly impossible.
I came to grips with that reality in August, when my mother died from an unexpected illness. Making the final arrangements was my job, and I valued the experience as much as one can while gripped by grief.
My mother, a nurse and devout Lutheran, spent her life caring for the world around her and the people whom Jesus called “the least of these brothers and sisters.” I felt strongly that her remains should be handled in a way that reflected her values and, to some extent, mine.
As funeral director and poet Thomas Lynch wrote, “By getting the dead where they need to go, the living get where they need to be.”
And where are the living? On a planet in serious peril, where resource- and land-intensive burial practices reflect the overconsumption that put us in this mess. So, in the days just before my mom’s death, and with the clock ticking fast, I explored “green burial” options in Southern California that minimize environmental impacts.
That involved ditching the local (and very expensive) mortuary giant Forest Lawn — where seemingly everyone in Glendale, my mom’s hometown, goes to spend eternity — and calling smaller funeral homes that advertise eco-friendly options.
I settled on a small business in Hollywood that partners with a natural burial cemetery — where the land is minimally disturbed and traditional embalming isn’t allowed — and even offers an intriguing “human composting” option. Crucially, prices for the most common services are listed prominently on the funeral home’s website (note to other mortuaries: Please do this).
But the eco-friendly options had serious drawbacks. The natural burial cemetery is near Joshua Tree (gorgeous, but 120 miles away), and human composting — a process that accelerates decomposition and, within a month, turns a body into nutrient-dense soil — isn’t yet legal in California and would have required shipping my dead mother to Washington state.
Burial options that require two-hour flights or three-hour car drives don’t strike me as green. Even in this era of heightened environmental consciousness, the most accessible disposal options are not the sustainable ones. Our final choice: local cremation.
Still, the future for handling the dead in an environmentally sound way isn’t totally dim. Last year, California passed a law to allow human composting starting in 2027. And, although there are only two fully natural burial grounds certified by the Green Burial Council in all of California (none of them near Los Angeles), more “traditional” cemeteries are offering some environmentally friendly options.
Sarah Chavez, executive director of the L.A.-based advocacy group the Order of the Good Death, told me these cemeteries and California lawmakers are responding to an increasing demand for burials that not only conserve resources, but are also more meaningful to the people seeking them.
She said the $20-billion U.S. funeral industry has commodified death in a way that has made people scared of their dead loved ones, convinced that only trained, very expensive professionals must take over the moment a relative dies.
I told Chavez my family resisted this routine, even if we didn’t get a green burial. The funeral home accommodated our request to sit with my mom for several hours before it sent workers to pick her up. In that time, the few of us there had a mini-funeral.
We alternated between tears, laughter and prayers, all while my mom was there with us. Her body was not hazardous waste to be swiftly disposed of.
Chavez said our experience reflects a grassroots change in death services. Her group supports families taking a more active role in burials. She said many people entering the funeral industry now are women who recognize the need for change, which I noticed in making my arrangements as well.
From this desire for more control, we’ll get more green burial options in the future. Just not in time for my mom.
A “green” funeral home in Colorado has found itself in trouble this week after 189 decaying human bodies were found on the premises.
The corpses, which were emitting an “abhorrent smell”, had initially been thought to number 115 when the Return to Nature Funeral Home storage facility in Penrose, Colorado, was first investigated by authorities two weeks ago.
Now, as of Tuesday, 189 bodies have been removed from the site, but authorities have said that numbers could change once again as the process of identifying the bodies continues.
Return to Nature Funeral Home is a so-called “green” funeral home, which holds burial services without the use of embalming fluids to preserve the bodies. There have been no arrests or charges so far, and Newsweek has contacted Return to Nature for comment via Instagram.
The bodies left to decay are now being identified by an FBI team usually deployed for mass casualties such as plane crashes. Around 120 families are worried that their relatives could be among the remains, but it will be weeks until identification of the bodies is completed, using fingerprints, dental records, and DNA testing.
It is perfectly legal not to embalm a body in Colorado and most other states, but the cadaver must be refrigerated. Colorado law specifically states: “A funeral establishment shall embalm, refrigerate, cremate, bury, or entomb human remains within twenty-four hours after taking custody of the remains.”
“Embalming is not required in any state, except in very limited circumstances,” Tanya D. Marsh, a professor of law at Wake Forest University and a licensed funeral director, told Newsweek. “The Colorado funeral home was required to either dispose of the bodies within 24 hours or refrigerate or embalm them. Violation of this is a class 1 misdemeanor in Colorado, which carries a maximum penalty of 364 days imprisonment, not more than a $1,000 fine, or both.
“In addition to criminal liability, this funeral home also faces tort liability from the families of the deceased for ‘interference with the right of sepulcher’,” Marsh said.
Additionally, Colorado has fairly lax rules regarding funeral homes, with operators requiring no routine inspections or qualifications.
The reasons why this funeral home did not manage to refrigerate its bodies is still unclear. However, the owners of the Return to Nature Funeral Home had reportedly missed tax payments in recent months, and were being sued for unpaid bills. They had also been recently evicted from one of their properties.
“We’ll find out more facts as the case unfolds, but my guess in Colorado is that the funeral home either lost its contract with a crematory, or there was some other problem. They started to get a backlog of cases, and it just got out of hand,” Marsh said. “It is really indefensible, but unfortunately not the first time it has happened.
“For example, in the Tri-State Crematory case in 2002, a crematory in Georgia was found to have more than 300 bodies that it had failed to cremate and that were kept on the property in various states of decay. There were also a number of cases of funeral homes with an excess of remains during the worst of the COVID-19 crisis in New York City, and some of those funeral homes did not properly store those bodies,” Marsh added.
The reason for this tragedy is not because of the funeral home’s “green” practices, but instead due to the mishandling of the bodies.
“To be clear, the reason this happened is not because this was a green funeral home. I really think it is important to emphasize this. It is because it was a funeral home that did not follow the most basic rules of care for human remains,” Marsh said.
Green funerals don’t embalm the bodies to avoid transferring harsh preservative chemicals into the ground, and bury people inside more-biodegradable caskets.
“Green funeral companies seek to reduce the amount of chemicals that are put in the soil by using coffins made from untreated materials; wicker is popular in the U.K. They do not embalm as this avoids the embalming chemicals such as formaldehyde and so on. As a result, decomposition occurs more naturally and is quicker and more complete,” Stephen Hughes, a senior lecturer in medicine at the Anglia Ruskin University School of Medicine in the U.K., told Newsweek.
Usually, in place of embalming, a body must be refrigerated to prevent decay. However, it appears that the bodies at Return to Nature Funeral Home were improperly stored. Without being kept cool, a body rapidly starts to break down.
“The decomposition process begins immediately after death,” Mark T. Evely, director of the Mortuary Science Program at Wayne State University, Michigan, told Newsweek. “The rate of decomposition depends on environmental conditions such as temperature, humidity, the setting in which the remains are located, and the physical conditions of the deceased prior to death.”
Other experts worry that this may mar the reputation of mortuary services and green funerals alike, sparking distrust of the practice.
“A great amount of trust is placed in funeral homes by families to care for their loved ones. When that trust is violated, it casts suspicion on the entire funeral profession,” Evely said. “I don’t know the reasons why there would be remains found in the way they were at the funeral home in Colorado. What I can say is that someone failed the families of these loved ones and failed to comply with the legal requirements of the state and the ethical duties demanded by the funeral service profession.”
This case raises the need for contingency plans for funerary providers in the event they are no longer financially viable, or that something goes wrong, Kate Woodthorpe, director of the U.K. Centre for Death and Society, told Newsweek.
“We have the same issue in the U.K. with regard to protecting the buried dead: When cemeteries are no longer income generating or financially viable, what happens? As an island running out of space, this is a critical question that no one has really answered in terms of who is responsible for their maintenance and long-term upkeep,” Woodthorpe said. “It also raises questions about the need for oversight and regulation of ‘green’ above-ground disposal methods. Unlike cremation (over quickly) or burial (contained underground), this third method needs greater surveillance, given the consequences in the event of a company going bust, or a generator failing and so on.”
As the remains continue to be identified, the bereaved families will have to wait for the dreaded news that one of their relatives’ bodies was included in the tragedy.
“In this situation, they may feel guilty that they have made such a disastrous choice of funeral home,” Dr. John Wilson, director of bereavement services counseling at York St John University, northern England, told Newsweek. “Guilt is a complicator of grief, and these relatives may need professional counseling to overcome this. On top of that, they may be traumatized by press reports, and by imagining the scene at the care home, adding to the sense of having let down their lost loved one.
“Anger is a natural feature of grief, so there will be many relatives who are angry to the point of it being potentially unhealthy,” Wilson added. “Given that the number of close mourners for every death averages between five and 10 people, that is going to be a lot of people who could need counseling.”
With the Earth screaming for attention through increasingly severe natural disasters, people are realizing our planet is vulnerable. After centuries of believing this world is immune to the ravages of human exploitation, abuse and disregard, a new movement some refer to as “greening” has dawned. With its spread and growing sophistication, more people are acting in novel ways to restore and nurture the long-term health of the planet.
Recently, awareness that this gorgeous planet on which we live and on which we are dependent has spawned interest in green, natural or conservation burials, and human composting.
Often misunderstood to be one and the same, green—or “natural”—burials are closer to Indigenous and ancient burial practices in which bodies are returned to the earth or burned in funeral pyres with no toxic chemicals introduced into the soil or air, and using biodegradable containers. Conservation burials go a step further, with the model calling for cemeteries to operate under the stewardship of conservation organizations, such as land trusts, and comply with protocols that ensure no harm is done to the surrounding plant and wildlife ecosystems.
Human composting steps up to the highest level of “green” and involves a process that accelerates and abbreviates the up to 20 years required for a buried human body to decompose naturally. Through applied biological science, the conversion of human remains into soil, known as human composting or more technically as natural organic reduction (NOR), upends the conventional funeral industry’s environmentally destructive methods.
Bioneers, a nonprofit organization founded in 1990 in New Mexico by social entrepreneurs Kenny Ausubel and Nina Simons, maintains an active presence and leadership team in the Bay Area. The organization serves as a hub, offering workshops, community conversations, a full complement of social media productions that include radio, podcast and book series, a national conference and, through the local Bioneers Network, third-party media projects such as Leonardo DiCaprio’s movie, The 11th Hour, and Michael Pollan’s best-selling book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma.
This year’s Annual Bioneers Conference in April featured a robust roster of experts, keynote speakers and artists joined by thousands of civically active people on the UC Berkeley Campus and in venues across downtown Berkeley. Recognizing the commonality to all people of the death experience and with avid interest in “good deaths” along with preserving the planet’s longevity for future generations, the conference, Revolution from the Heart of Nature, included leaders in the areas of human composting, green burials and honoring the Earth as a final act.
Bioneers frequently gathers experts and composes panels who discuss specific, highly relevant-to-the-moment topics. The curated conversations hone general programs according to community interest and address anything from restorative food systems to youth leadership in the environmental movement to health care. Increased public awareness resulting from the programs sparks further discussions and activism, sometimes leading to solutions for eradicating obstacles to greater justice and equity, especially in marginalized communities.
“Contemporary culture has a hard time with death and dying,” says Bioneers President Teo Grossman. “This is true spiritually as well as practically, and it’s a conversation many would simply rather not have. As we know, there is literally no way around it. As we reckon with the impact humanity is having on the planet, exploring innovative approaches to death and dying should naturally be part of that conversation.”
Bioneers’ mission is to offer a public platform for people working on revolutionary solution-seeking projects who perhaps don’t have the bandwidth to do their own outreach to the press, Grossman says. While not claiming to be an expert, he says, “Our relationship with the natural world as humans, and our resulting actions, are clearly of significant importance. Innovative projects and ideas regarding practices around death and dying support extending that conversation to ‘new’ areas. I say ‘new’ in quotes because, as I’m sure the experts in this field have mentioned, the idea of integrating death and dying with nature and natural systems is probably as old as the idea of human rituals—and it’s only relatively recently that it has been dis-integrated.”
In light of Grossman’s earnest step back to remove himself from the limelight, it’s best to turn to one of the experts from the annual event to learn more about the green death movement and the level of interest in the Bay Area.
Katrina Spade, the founder and CEO of Recompose, a licensed, green funeral home based in Seattle, says there is strong interest in innovative death care and human composting specifically.
“This is not just people wanting to return to the Earth,” Spade said. “I love natural [green] burial, but if that’s all people wanted, it would be rising faster in popularity. Human composting lets you approach the whole thing in a way that feels new, even though nature is doing the work. The Recompose process is science coupled with an approach to death care that’s fresh, acknowledges death occurs and remembers that all of us have a capacity to be a part of the experience in a deeper way than might have been allowed by the conventional funeral industry.”
Recompose began accepting bodies for human composting in December 2020. In a nutshell, the process involves placing the body in an eight-foot-long steel cylinder filled with wood chips, alfalfa and straw. The mixture is calibrated for each individual and once the vessel is closed, the body’s transformation begins. During the next 30 days, the Recompose staff monitor the moisture, heat and pH levels inside the vessels, occasionally rotating them, until the body is transformed into soil. The soil is then transferred to curing bins, where it remains for two weeks before being tested for toxins and cleared for pickup. Eight-to-12 weeks after the process begins, the human soil can be used to enrich a garden, donated to a conservation organization to be used on privatized land or spread over multiple locations.
A composted body produces approximately one cubic yard of soil, an amount that fills a pickup truck bed and weighs upwards of 1,500 pounds. Importantly, and a reason many people are gravitating to NOR, is that the practice avoids conventional burial or cremation, which collectively adds one metric ton of carbon dioxide, per body, to the atmosphere. Additionally, the Recompose process does not use up valuable land or pollute the soil, and reduces contributions to climate change related to the production and transport of headstones, caskets, grave liners, urns and other items. It’s estimated the carbon output from a year’s worth of cremations in the United States is equivalent to burning 400 million pounds of coal.
“Some people say, ‘Composting humans has happened forever,’” Spade says. “But actually composting is a process that is by definition human-managed natural decomposition that is accelerated. Composting in any industry is something people are doing, not de-composting happening out in the wild. I think that’s a helpful distinction. Natural burial is just about a perfect solution for our dead, but because it takes land, it’s mostly a rural solution.”
She adds, “With composting, it’s possible to serve many more people in cities, because it doesn’t require the land of conventional burial or the time of natural burial that happens in the ground. Depending on soil quality and the climate, it takes years to decompose or desiccate a human body. With NOR, we’re transforming the human body inside of a highly managed vessel system—adding oxygen via a basic air pump and the exact recipe of plant materials that balance carbon and nitrogen so that the body will break down in a relatively short amount of time. We’re also monitoring for temperature because we want to make sure the material is safe for use on plants.”
The most common question Spade is asked about the process involves the bones. The mulch-like material at the end of the first 30 days still has bones, along with any non-organic matter, such as a titanium hip. The bones are reduced, basically pulverized as they are in a cremation, and turned into a sand-like substance. Inorganic materials are recycled, if possible. Once all the microbial activity is complete and the soil dries out, she says the remains scientifically, biologically and by look and feel, resemble compost a person might buy at a nursery.
Lynette Pang is a Bay Area resident, passionate gardener and an early investor in Recompose. After more than 20 years working in the investment management industry, she decided the second half of her life would involve something revolutionary. She began reading books on death, dying and grief, including From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death, by Caitlin Doughty.
“The book is a treasure,” Pang says. “But one chapter stood out: it was about something called the Urban Death Project. Wanting to learn more, I turned to the internet and learned about Recompose, formerly called the Urban Death Project. The concept of human composting was right up my alley. It just makes sense. I truly believe the practice of human composting will change, and maybe even save, the world. It is an investment in hope.”
Pang says she plans to participate in Recompose and hopes taboos surrounding death will diminish and that people will speak freely about how they want to die. “We are born, we live and then we die,” she says. “To me, it’s just that. When it is time to make my exit, whether that is tomorrow or many, many years from now, I shall be gifted to the earth as glorious, black gold.”
To do so, at least until 2027, Pang and other Californians will have to travel to Seattle.
“California is a great example of what’s holding NOR back,” Spade says. “The regulatory law passed in 2022 authorized NOR, but then there was a four-year regulatory period tacked on. How could it take four years to write regulations around NOR? Washington [state] was first to legalize the process, and we have two agencies that wrote regulations that are straightforward and make everything safe. Washington passed the bill in May 2019 and it went into effect May 2020. We did it first and had to do it from scratch, but other states could look to Washington [to write their regulations].”
She points out it takes a fair amount of capital to get a facility up and running, and adds that “any type of funeral care isn’t something you can snap your fingers and have up and running instantly.” In the meantime, Spade dreams and plans to open and direct facilities similar to Recompose’s Seattle home base in the top 12 urban centers in the United States. Conversations to franchise the brand and system to funeral homes and cemeteries have begun as the leadership team structures licensing agreements.
Spade recounts a favorite client story. “It’s about a person named Wayne who died and his sister brought his remains home to where he gardened his whole life. His neighbors and friends came with five-gallon buckets and took some of him home to their own gardens.” Spade says half of the families bring a truck or trailer, pick up the soil and take it home; the other 50% choose to donate it, through Recompose, to conservation efforts. “We have land partners that are conservation trusts owned by nonprofits,” she says. “Clients can donate soil to that trust so it is used in the forest to nourish the land. Families can go visit those places.”
A more universal story is the number of people who learn about human composting and green burials and say, “I want that.”
“As I began to grow Recompose, it became clear again and again that there was a lot of interest out there for options in funeral care that are sustainable and aligned with the planet,” Spade says. “Having your last gesture be a good one on the Earth, they say, is important.”
— Our funeral practices have a high carbon footprint. Becca Warner explores how she could plan her own more environmentally-friendly burial.
By Becca Warner
Not many of us like talking about death. It’s dark, and sad, and prone to throwing us into an existential spiral. But the uncomfortable truth is that, as someone who cares about the environment, I realised I needed to stop ignoring the reality of it. Once we’re gone, our bodies need somewhere to go – and the ways that we typically burn or bury bodies in the West come at a scary environmental cost.
Most people in the UK (where I’m from) are cremated when they die, and burning bodies isn’t good for the planet. The stats make wince-worthy reading. A typical cremation in the UK is gas-powered, and is estimated to produce 126kg (278lb) CO2 equivalent emissions (CO2e) – about the same as driving from Brighton to Edinburgh. In the US, the average is even higher, at 208kg (459lb) CO2e. It’s perhaps not the most carbon-intensive thing we’ll do in our lives – but when the majority of people in many countries opt to go up in smoke when they die, those emissions quickly add up.
What is CO2e?
CO2 equivalent, or CO2e, is the metric used to quantify the emissions from various greenhouse gases on the basis of their capacity to warm the atmosphere – their global warming potential.
Burying a body isn’t much better. In some countries, the grave is lined with concrete, a carbon intensive material, and the body housed in a resource-heavy wood or steel coffin. Highly toxic embalming fluid, such as formaldehyde, is often used, which leaches into the soil alongside heavy metals that harm ecosystems and pollute the water table. And the coffin alone can be responsible for as much as 46kg (101lb) CO2e, depending on the combination of materials used.
I spend my days attempting to tread lightly on the planet – recycling cereal boxes, taking the bus, choosing tofu over steak. The idea that my death will necessitate one final, poisonous act is hard to stomach. I am resolved to find a more sustainable option. (Listen to the Climate Question’s episode exploring whether we can have a climate-friendly death).
In traditional burials, graves are lined with concrete, a carbon-intensive material, and bodies are embalmed in toxic fluids which can leach into the soil
My first port of call is the Natural Death Centre, a charity based in the UK. I pick up the phone and am pleased to find Rosie Inman-Cook on the other end of the line – a chatty, no-nonsense type who is quick to warn me about the dubiousness of many alternative deathcare practices. “There are always companies jumping on the bandwagon, seeing a cash cow, inventing stuff. There’s a lot of coffin producers and funeral packages that will sell you a ‘green thing’ and plant a tree. You have to be careful.”
Her warning brings to mind some “eco urns” I’ve read about. Some are biodegradable, so that buried ashes can be mixed with soil and grow into a tree; others combine ashes with cement so they can form part of an artificial coral reef. These options offer a kind of eco-novelty: what’s a more fitting end for an ocean lover than to rest among the reefs or for a forest fanatic to “transform” into a tree after their death? The only problem is that however sustainable the urn, the ashes deposited in it are the product of carbon-intensive cremation.
So can I avoid my body becoming a billowing cloud of black smoke in the first place?
Inman-Cook’s remit is natural burials. This involves burying a body without any barriers to decomposition – no embalming fluids, no plastic liners or metal caskets. All of this means zero CO2 emissions, according to a recent analysis conducted by UK sustainability certification company Planet Mark. The body is buried in a relatively shallow grave, which might be someone’s garden, or, more often, a natural burial site.
Some natural burial sites allow graves to be marked with stones or other simple markers; others are stricter and don’t allow any markings at all. These are woodlands or other wildlife-rich places, often managed in a way that actively supports conservation. “It’s [about] creating green spaces for wildlife, nice places for people to visit, planting new woodland at the same time – and it’s a positive legacy,” Inman-Cook says.
But what of the not-so-natural materials that make their way into the human body – pharmaceuticals, microplastics, heavy metals? They surely don’t belong in the ground. One solution might come in the form of a coffin made of fungi. The Loop Living Cocoon claims to be the world’s first living coffin. It is made of a native, non-invasive species of mushroom mycelium, which is also used to create insulation panels, packaging and furniture. I speak to its inventor, Bob Hendrikx.
“The best thing that we can do is die in the forest and just lay there,” he says. “But one of the problems we’re facing is soil degradation – the quality of the soil is getting poorer and poorer, especially in funeral sites, because there’s a lot of pollution there. The human body is [also] getting more polluting.” Microplastics, for example, have now been found in human blood.
Natural burials are growing in popularity. It involves burying a body without any barriers to decomposition – no embalming fluids, plastic liners or metal caskets
Mycelium has the power to increase soil health and absorb heavy metals that would otherwise leach into groundwater. Some fungi species have been found to break down microplastics, and future research could uncover ways to harness this for human burials.
But based on current research, the real impact of today’s mushroom coffins is difficult to know. I ask Rima Trofimovaite, author of Planet Mark’s report, what the likely benefits of a mushroom coffin are. She says that there is limited data on whether human bodies pollute the ground following a natural burial in a shallow grave. But she says that it is likely that most pollutants are “sorted out at the right level with the right organisms” when only a few feet underground, no extra fungi needed. “I think an option like this is still important,” she says. “We know that natural burial is the least emitting, but not everyone likes being wrapped up in a cotton shroud. People might prefer a mushroom coffin because it has a shape.”
However ecologically sound a natural burial – with or without fungi – might be, land remains precious. In cities in particular, green space for natural woodland burials is at a premium. It was this that prompted young architecture student Katrina Spade to investigate what could be done to make burials in cities less wasteful. Her solution is a logical one: to compost the body in a hexagonal steel vessel, reducing it to a nutrient-dense soil that the family can lay onto their garden.
Sustainabilty on a Shoestring
We currently live in an unsustainable world. While the biggest gains in the fight to curb climate change will come from the decisions made by governments and industries, we can all play our part. In Sustainability on a Shoestring, BBC Future explores how each of us can contribute as individuals to reducing carbon emissions by living more sustainably, without breaking the bank.
Spade launched Recompose, the world’s first human composting facility, in Seattle in 2020. Washington was the first US state legalise human composting the same year, and the practice is now legal in seven US states. Other human composting facilities have sprung up in Colorado and Washington.
Recompose has so far composted around 300 bodies. The process happens over the course of five to seven weeks. Lying in its specialised vessel, the body is surrounded by wood chips, alfalfa and straw. The air is carefully monitored and controlled, to make it a comfortable home for the microbes that help speed up the body’s decomposition. The remains are eventually removed, having transformed into two wheelbarrows-worth of compost. The bones and teeth – which don’t decompose – are removed, broken down mechanically, and added to the compost. Any implants, pacemakers or artificial joints are recycled whenever possible, says Spade.
With no need for energy-intense burning, human composting has a far smaller carbon footprint than cremation. In a lifecycle assessment conducted by Leiden University and Delft University of Technology, using data provided by Recompose, the climate impact of composting a body was found to be a fraction of that of cremation: 28kg (62lb) of CO2e compared to 208kg (459lb) CO2e in the US. When I ask Spade about the production of methane – a particularly harmful greenhouse gas that is released when organic matter rots – she explains that the vessels are aerated to ensure there’s plenty of oxygen. This prevents the anaerobic process that causes rotting, she says.
Turning a human body into soil also reminds us that “we’re not adjacent to nature, we’re part of nature,” Spade says. This shift in our relationship to the natural world is an environmental benefit that’s hard to quantify but is “critical to the plight of the planet”, she says.
Turning a human body into soil reminds us that “we’re not adjacent to nature, we’re part of nature,” says Katrina Spade, founder of Recompose
Can anyone be composted? I ask Spade this question as I want to know if I’d “qualify” to meet the same end as a banana peel. The answer is, broadly, yes – but not if I’ve died of Ebola, a prion disease (a rare type of transmissible brain disease), or tuberculosis, as these pathogens have not been shown to be broken down by composting, says Spade.
As she describes the process, it strikes me that clothes would presumably not be welcome in the composting vessel. Instead, the remains are shrouded in linen, and families who choose to hold a ceremony can cover them with organic wood chips, straw, flowers, even shredded love letters.
“In one case, a family brought red bell peppers and purple onions that had just ripened in their loved one’s garden – it was so beautiful,” Spade recalls. The body enters a “threshold vessel”, where the Recompose team takes over. They remove the linen shroud but not the flowers and vegetables. I quietly hope that my family would really go for it here. I picture baskets of pine cones, mounds of mushrooms, maybe some of my beloved house plants.
This is all feeling very earthy – but there is another low-carbon option that centres around a different element: water. “Water cremation” (also known as “aquamation”, “alkaline hydrolysis” or “resomation”) is an alternative to traditional cremation, and was the method of choice for Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who helped end apartheid in South Africa. It is another altogether gentler and cleaner affair than cremation, producing just 20kg (44lb) CO2e. “That’s a big difference,” Trofimovaite says. “You slash massive amounts of emissions with resomation compared to flame cremation.”
Approximately 1,500 litres (330 gallons) of water is mixed with potassium hydroxide, and heated to 150C (302°F). In just four hours, the human body is reduced to sterile liquid. More than 20,000 people have been water cremated over the last 12 years, mostly in the US. The UK’s largest funeral provider, Co-op Funeralcare, recently announced that it will introduce the practice later this year.
The speed of water cremation makes it a great budget option. The Co-op anticipate the cost to be comparable to flame cremation – around £1,200 ($1,500) with basic support but no funeral service. Natural burials can be a similar price, but costs are often much higher, depending on the individual burial site. Composting is a lot more pricey at $7,000 (£5,500) – slightly more than the average standard UK burial, which costs £4,794 ($6,107).
I speak to Sandy Sullivan, founder of Resomation – a company that sells water cremation equipment to funeral homes across North America, Ireland and the UK (and plans to in the Netherlands, New Zealand and Australia in the next year). He is patient when I say I’m picturing the process as a kind of melting, and that I’m not sure how I feel about that.
“This is what you end up with,” he says, holding up a large, clear bag filled with a bright white powder. “This is flour, by the way,” he adds quickly. The point is that the final product is dry, ash-like. The flour is a likeness of what is returned to the family, and it comprises only the bones, which have been mechanically crushed (as they are following flame cremation). The soft tissue of the body is broken down in the water and disappears down the pipes to the water treatment plant.
Flame cremations are among the most carbon-intensive funeral rites
Sullivan’s bag of flour represents the physical takeaway that is so important to many families. It demonstrates what Julie Rugg, director of the University of York’s Cemetery Research Group in the UK, says is central to so much of our thinking about funeral practices.
“In the face of death, we seek consolation. And it’s been really interesting seeing how there’s been a conflict, in some cases, between what is sustainable and what people find consoling,” she says. Bags of bone ash and compost go some way towards overcoming this by offering us something tangible, an anchor for our grief.
As I consider the various options I’ve learned about – melting, mulching, mycellium – I find my thoughts returning to my first conversation with Inman-Cook. I am taken with the simplicity of natural burial, the absence of any bell, whistle, vessel or chamber. I’m pleased to learn that, based on all she has learned during her scientific analysis, Trofimovaite has reached the same conclusion. “I would try to do it as natural as possible,” she tells me. “Natural burials are the most appealing.” But an unmarked natural burial is a perfect example of the conflict Rugg has identified.
Carbon Count
“Somebody says they love the idea of being buried in this beautiful meadow, but they can’t put anything down on the grave,” she says. Rugg describes “guerilla gardening” taking place at one natural burial site, by a family member intent on surreptitiously marking their loved one’s grave with distinctive clovers. “What we’ve got to arrive at is a system which allows us to feel that our loss is special. We’ve got to think about sustainability at scale that still offers consolation.”
The answer, it seems to me, could lie in reimagining what “special” can mean. As Rugg says, in a typical memorial garden “you can’t move for plaques everywhere. We resist the dead disappearing, and actually we find that less consoling than we might think.”
I come away from the conversation with a clear sense that, assuming I’ve avoided going up in a puff of smoke, one of the most helpful things I can do is to refuse to lay claim to any single patch of land at all. I hope my family could find consolation in the knowledge that I’d be happier becoming one with a whole landscape. Why be a tree when I can become a forest?
Hayley West wants to become compost when she dies.
But if that’s not an option, she’s happy to be cremated and scattered somewhere in the bush around Castlemaine, central Victoria.
“By the time I die, [I hope] human composting will be happening in Australia,” Ms West said.
“Somebody I know and love will pick up my soily cremains and go and plant then somewhere.”
She said 70 per cent of Australians get cremated as people move away from traditional burials, but an increasingly wide array of post-death options await, in part due to a growing willingness for people to talk about death.
You may not be able to become human compost yet but perhaps you would like your ashes turned into jewellery or a paperweight. Or maybe you’d like a tree planted in your name.
The options are as endless as death itself.
New ways to be dead
Ms West is a Castlemaine artist who presents a weekly radio show about death called Dead Air.
She also hosts semi-regular “death cafes” — a worldwide phenomenon where people get together “to eat cake, drink tea and discuss death”, as the website puts it.
“Fifteen years ago I was considered just morbid and kind of odd for talking about this,” she said.
Hayley West co-hosts Death Cafes and presents a weekly radio show about death and dying.
“It’s evolved and a really interesting space to be in now.
“I have the only live radio show in Australia that actually talks about [death] and I love the idea that somebody could just tune in, hear something interesting and then go away and tell someone else in the community about it.”
Ms West said that in the past five years, she’s noticed more people thinking differently about what to do with their body after they die, including making a minimal impact on the environment.
“People often get scattered [as ashes] in memorable places rather than being interred in cemeteries or there’s now even the option of natural burial,” she said.
How to become a diamond
Heathcote-based author Amanda Collins is “a death doula” who helps people navigate their end.
She says she has also noticed that, over the past decade or so, the rules around funerals and memorials have gone out the window in “a very good way”.
Amanda Collins helps support people caring for someone who is dying.
“I’ve seen ashes turned into diamonds, or the slightly less expensive option of being placed in glass paperweights and jewellery,” she said.
And while there are still cultures in Australia that have a strong tradition of visiting the cemetery to clean up the grave of a loved one and bring flowers, a growing number of people are looking for alternatives.
“We no longer follow rituals just because it’s always been done like that,” Ms Collins said.
“There’s a wonderful artist in Melbourne who will take clothing from your loved one and shred that clothing, which sounds drastic, then weave a new garment or blanket or something you have in your house as a memento.”
Filling the dead air
Central Victorian sisters Caitlin Epps and Bec Gallagher co-host The Loss Mothers podcast, guiding women through open discussion about the loss of their children.
The podcasts, or private recordings for those who don’t want their session made public, can act as a “modern day time capsule” and provide a neutral space for people who might be struggling to describe their grief to family and friends.
“They want to continue their memories — to be able to talk about their loved one freely, and not forget about them.”
The sisters have also created conversation cards people can use to open those channels of communication.
Sisters Bec Gallagher and Caitlin Epps (right) co-host The Loss Mothers podcast.
“It can be a great way to start a conversation,” she said.
“The more we talk about these things the more it becomes normalised.”
A continuing conversation
Ms Collins, in her role as a death doula, advises people to keep revisiting their death and funeral plans.
She suggests Dying to Know Day on August 8 as a great reminder to revise plans each year.
“I wrote a funeral plan when I was in my early 30s and I’m now in my 50s,” Ms Collins said.
“[Initially] I set out a lot of directions and told everybody exactly what I wanted and I don’t want that anymore.”
For now, she’s just on the lookout for good, appropriate funeral songs.
Ms Collins advises people to keep revisiting their death and funeral plans.
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