The fact that you can turn your vegetable peels and food scraps into compost is nothing new. However, now, if you are a resident of New York, you can even turn your dearly departed loved one into compost.
As shocking as it may sound, New York has become the latest in the United States to allow human composting — which means to have their body turned into soil after their death, a move that is seen as an environmentally friendly alternative to a burial or cremation. The process, also called terramation or natural organic reduction, received the nod from Governor Kathy Hochul on Saturday.
New York isn’t the first to allow this process; it follows in the footsteps of Washington, which first legalised this process in 2019, Colorado, Oregon, Vermont and California. Across the world, human composting is already legal throughout Sweden.
Let’s take a closer look at this process, how it works and the argument for and against it.
What is human composting?
Human composting — also known as natural organic reduction or the reduction of human remains — is the process of turning human remains into soil. According to proponents of this method, it is a gentle way of bidding goodbye to one’s loved ones and is also friendlier to the environment.
According to Katrina Spade, the founder and CEO of Recompose, the Seattle based company that became the first full-service human-composting funeral home, the idea for this process came in 2013 when she proposed the same in her graduate thesis. “Our bodies have nutrients,” Spade said The Verge. “What if we could grow new life after we’ve died?”
In her thesis, Spade envisioned a “dark, quiet, and safe” space where the natural work of decomposition could be scaled for an urban population and managed in an industrial setting. After graduation, Spade worked with soil scientists, lobbyists, and investors to make the case for legalisation in Washington and Recompose was born and human composting became legal in 2019 in Washington.
How does it work?
According to funeral homes like Recompose, the body is placed on to a bed of wood chips, alfalfa and straw inside a steel, eight-foot-long by four-foot-tall cylinder.
Microbes break down the corpse and the plant matter, transforming the various components into nutrient-rich soil in roughly 30 days. Staffers at special human composting funeral homes then remove the compost from the vessel and allow it to cure for two to six weeks. Family members can then use the human compost like any other type of compost, such as by mixing it into a flower bed, or they can donate it to be spread in conservation areas.
It is said that each body creates about one cubic yard of soil or 36 bags. According to the Recompose website, everything — including bones and teeth — transforms during the process. Only non-organic material like prosthetics and artificial joints are fetched from the cylinder and removed.
Anna Swenson, the outreach manager at Recompose, was quoted as telling Popular Science that the process isn’t for everyone. Bodies that have been embalmed cannot be decomposed in a vessel because it has disturbed the natural decomposition process.
She added that it also may not be right for people with diseases such as tuberculosis or who have undergone treatments such as radiation a month before passing away. This is largely to ensure that the resulting soil doesn’t have harmful pathogens, and it is always tested once the decomposition has been completed.
Katrina Spade, founder of Recompose, the first human composting service provider in the US, with a human body about to be sealed in the composting chamber. Image Courtesy: Recompose
What are the benefits of this method?
While this process may sound unorthodox, those who support it cite many benefits to it. The supporters of human composting state that it’s friendlier to the environment and is also the ultimate act of charity — returning to the soil that helps nourish our lives.
Spade of Recompose says that human composting uses much less energy than cremation and is environmentally friendly.
According to Chemical & Engineering News, a publication of the American Chemical Society, cremating one corpse emits an estimated 418 pounds of carbon dioxide into the air, the equivalent of driving 470 miles in a car.
Another study by Green Burial Council Inc, an organisation that oversees certification standards for cemeteries, funeral homes, stated that cremations in the US account for 1.74 billion pounds of carbon dioxide emissions each year.
On the other hand, human composting doesn’t use energy or fossil fuels. In fact, it also avoids the introduction of non-biodegradable materials — such as concrete or plastic vaults, steel caskets or lacquers — to the atmosphere or land, and forest depletion for wood caskets.
As Anna Swenson explains to Popular Science, “We use one-eighth of the energy required by conventional burial or cremation, we don’t use fossil fuels and gas the way that crematoriums use. The only electricity involved is in powering the computer that monitors the vessels… it’s low energy usage that way.”
California estimates that if every resident chose natural reduction as their burial method, nearly 2.5 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions could be saved in just 10 years.
Besides releasing less pollutants in the air, human composting is good for soil and vegetation.
Human composting isn’t only legal in New York. It is allowed in Washington, Colorado, Oregon, Vermont and California. Across the world, human composting is already legal throughout Sweden. Image used for representational purposes/Pixabay
Walt Patrick, the senior steward at Herland Forest, a non-profit that also performs green burials and human composting, was quoted as saying, “The forest needs the elements that are in the body– magnesium, the calcium, the phosphorus, and all of those things in the body are desperately needed for the soil. When people harvest the forest they pull stuff out, if the trees don’t have magnesium they can’t make chlorophyll, they don’t have chlorophyll, they can’t grow.”
Apart from the environmental benefits of human composting, it is also medically beneficial to funeral home workers. If more people opt for human composting, staff at funeral homes will be protected from exposure to high levels of formaldehyde, which has been found to cause myeloid leukaemia and rare cancers.
Human composting also is a practical solution to the problem of space. Cities across the US are running out of space to bury the deceased. Some designated cemeteries are predicted to run out of room within the next decade or two, making it difficult for families to have their loved ones entombed in the same area. By composting, space isn’t taken up and open spaces are preserved.
What do critics say?
However, not all are supportive of this method of bidding adieu to their loved ones.
The New York State Catholic Conference, a group that represents bishops in the state, is vociferously against this method, calling it “inappropriate”.
“A process that is perfectly appropriate for returning vegetable trimmings to the earth is not necessarily appropriate for human bodies,” Dennis Poust, executive director of the organisation, said in a statement, as per an Associated Press report, adding, “Human bodies are not household waste, and we do not believe that the process meets the standard of reverent treatment of our earthly remains.”
The California Catholic Conference is also of the same view, stating that human composting “reduces the human body to simply a disposable commodity”.
Human composting, with an average cost of $5,500 and $7,000, isn’t a cheap proposition. However, a look at the current average cost of a burial in the US is $7,848 in 2021 or $6,971 for a funeral with a cremation, making human composting a viable and competitive option.
With inputs from agencies
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