Human Composting is Gaining Acceptance

 

by Pa Rock

Friend of the Earth

The art of reducing organic matter to soil has been practiced in farm settings for decades, and many amateur gardeners now have compost piles or manmade composters that they use for turning table scraps, garbage, leaves, and other organic matter into compost which is then spread into gardens and flower beds.  Farmers and ranchers have also learned over the years that is is simpler and more productive to compost dead farm animals than it is to try and burn or bury the carcasses.  

Now, just within the past five or six years, a movement has been growing in the United States promoting the composting of human bodies.  

I first wrote of this phenomenon in this blog on May 23, 2019, in a piece entitled "Composting Gramma," in response to Jay Inslee, the governor of Washington, signing a law allowing the composting of human remains.  Washington was the first state to take that bold step.  Then, more than three years after that, on September 29, 2022, I wrote a second posting on the same subject entitled "Ashes to Ashes, or Guts to Dirt?" which discussed the human composting option after the process had been up and running in Washington with some actual experience to draw from.

This past week David Browne, writing for Rolling Stone, published an extensive essay on human composting entitled, "It Smells Like Earth:  Inside the Eco-Minded World of Human Composting."  Mr. Browne's article recapped the process and its benefits to the planet, and he used interviews with personnel from three human composting companies in the Seattle area as the "bones" of his story.  The article is a fascinating read and readily available on the internet.

The professionals refer to the process as "natural organic reduction (NOR)," but its common moniker remains "human composting," and it is a topic that leaves many feeling ill-at-ease.  Each of the companies discussed have their own special "recipes" for assisting bodies to decompose, but basically the process is this:  bodies are placed individually in large tumblers (sometimes called "vessels") along with a mix of organic matter (special combinations of things like wild flowers, sawdust, wood chips, alfalfa straw, and other vegetative matter) that will assist in the decomposition process.   Air is also occasionally pumped through the tumblers.  After thirty days or so the tumbler is opened revealing about a pickup load of compost,  The bones are removed, ground up, and added back to the mixture, and the compost is removed and delivered to relatives or to whatever place the deceased intended for his or her compost to be used.  

If the deceased or the family wanted a stone to commemorate the departed, there is no reason that they can't have one in a cemetery or wherever they would like, and the compost can go to any special family projects, such as a memorial garden or tree plantings, and some of the composting companies have special areas such as parks where the compost can be deposited.

Today most bodies are embalmed (pumped full of poison which eventually seeps into the earth) and buried, or cremated, a burning process that takes an inordinate amount of energy and then only produces ash which has no value to the planet.    Composting is proving to be an option that is especially popular among the younger generations.  It is opposed by the traditional funeral industry as well as some religious groups - like the Catholic Church - which sees a religious need for a body to somehow connect to the afterlife (although cremation offers no such conduit).

The movement has spread since Governor Inslee signed that first bill in Washington in 2019, and today the process is legal not only in Washington, but also in Oregon, New York, Vermont, Nevada, Arizona, and soon in California (2027).   Currently the only operational facilities for Natural Organic Reduction (human composting) are in Washington and Colorado, but the service is expanding quickly.

We are living in a brave new world, and the option of turning our mortal remains into nutrient rich soil is on the horizon for all of us.  It is an option that I find intriguing and personally appealing.  It would be comforting to know that I might be of benefit to the planet after I am gone, instead of just being pumped full of formaldehyde and left moldering in the ground.

Perhaps in the next life I could reach to the skies as a mighty oak!  I would like that.