Olson Kundig
No longer will the options when we die be a choice between just burial or cremation. Soon it will be possible to compost your remains and leave your loved ones with rich soil, thanks to a new funeral service opening in Seattle in 2021 that will convert humans into soil in just 30 days, as The Independent reported.
<p><a href="https://www.recompose.life/" target="_blank">Recompose</a> markets itself as a service offering "natural organic reduction" to the public, according to its <a href="https://www.recompose.life/faq" target="_blank">website</a>. The facility is meant to recognize that death is a momentous <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/spiritual" rel="noopener noreferrer">spiritual</a> event and to take the opportunity to reconnect funeral rites with <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/nature" rel="noopener noreferrer">nature</a> and to offer a greener alternative to burial or cremation, according to <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90434525/the-worlds-first-human-composting-facility-could-help-us-recycle-ourselves" target="_blank">Fast Company</a>. </p>
<p>Recompose, which will be able to hold 75 bodies in its flagship facility in Seattle, says it will turn a dead body into usable soil in just 30 days in a process that is much less resource-intensive than cremation or burial. In fact, according to the <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/funeral-green-burial-climate-change-environment-soil-composting-recompose-seattle-a9238896.html?utm_source=reddit.com" target="_blank">The Independent</a>, the process will use one-eighth the energy of cremation and save a metric ton of CO2 from being emitted, compared to most forms of burial. </p>
<p>A burial usually requires chemical-laden embalming, while cremation is energy intensive, according to the architects at Olson Kundig who designed the new facility, as <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90434525/the-worlds-first-human-composting-facility-could-help-us-recycle-ourselves" target="_blank">Fast Company</a> reported.</p>
<p>"Our service - recomposition - gently converts human remains into soil, so that we can nourish new life after we die," Recompose's <a href="https://www.recompose.life/" target="_blank">website</a> says. "Recompose takes guidance from nature. At the heart of our model is a system that will gently return us to the earth after we die."</p>
<p>"By converting human remains into soil, we minimize waste, avoid polluting groundwater with embalming fluid, and prevent the emissions of CO2 from cremation and from the manufacturing of caskets, headstones, and grave liners," the company's <a href="https://www.recompose.life/" target="_blank">website</a> explains. "By allowing organic processes to transform our bodies and those of our loved ones into a useful soil amendment, we help to strengthen our relationship to the natural cycles while enriching the earth."</p>
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Olson Kundig
<p>The project has been in the works since 2016 when Recompose founder and CEO Katrina Spade and her team collaborated with architects to create a prototype facility, according to <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90434525/the-worlds-first-human-composting-facility-could-help-us-recycle-ourselves" target="_blank">Fast Company</a>.</p> <p>However, the project only got off the ground after Washington became the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/washington-human-body-composting-2637805371.html" rel="noopener noreferrer">first state to explicitly allow natural organic reduction for human remains</a>, or human composting. The law, which will go into effect in May 2020, allows funeral homes to accelerate the process of turning human remains into soil, which allows for environmentally friendly burials in urban and suburban areas that do not have wide-open tracts of land available for burial, according to <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/funeral-green-burial-climate-change-environment-soil-composting-recompose-seattle-a9238896.html?utm_source=reddit.com" target="_blank">The Independent</a>. </p> <p>Recompose uses stacked hexagonal vessels, resembling a honeycomb, to store dead bodies. The bodies sealed in the hexagonal tubes are covered in woodchips, alfalfa and hay. There the temperature is regulated, the dirt is aerated, and conditions are optimized for bacteria to breakdown organic matter over the course of several weeks, as <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/funeral-green-burial-climate-change-environment-soil-composting-recompose-seattle-a9238896.html?utm_source=reddit.com" target="_blank">The Independent</a> reported.</p> <p>"We asked ourselves how we could use nature – which has perfected the life/death cycle – as a model for human death care," said Katrina Spade, as <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/funeral-green-burial-climate-change-environment-soil-composting-recompose-seattle-a9238896.html?utm_source=reddit.com" target="_blank">The Independent</a> reported. "We saw an opportunity for this profound moment to both give back to the earth and reconnect us with these natural cycles."</p> <p>A single body plus the woodchips, alfalfa and hay will net one cubic yard of soil, or several wheelbarrows full. Some families will take the soil home to use, while others can donate it to conservation projects on the slopes of Bells Mountain in Washington, according to the <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/life/recompose-the-human-composting-project-finds-a-home-in-seattles-sodo/" target="_blank">Seattle Times.</a></p> <p>"These days, some families regard even ashes from cremation as a burden, not a joy," Spade said to the <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/life/recompose-the-human-composting-project-finds-a-home-in-seattles-sodo/" target="_blank">Seattle Times.</a>. "As in, 'we've had these ashes in the garage for six years.' And we're creating a cubic yard of soil."</p>From Your Site Articles
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An artist's rendering of the recomposition facility. MOLT Studios
Washington became the first U.S. state to legalize human composting Tuesday, offering residents a more environmentally friendly way to dispose of their remains, AFP reported.
<p>The <a href="https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=5001&Year=2019&Initiative=false" target="_blank">bill</a>, signed by Governor and <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/governor-jay-inslee-presidential-bid-2630642720.html" target="_self">climate-focused presidential candidate Jay Inslee</a>, would allow people who die in Washington after May 2020 to forgo burial or cremation and have their bodies turned into <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/soil" target="_self">soil</a> through a process called recomposition.</p>
<p>"Recomposition offers an alternative to embalming and burial or cremation that is natural, safe, sustainable, and will result in significant savings in carbon emissions and land usage," Katrina Spade, who worked to develop the process and lobbied for the bill, told AFP.</p>
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="a369ff5b52041d8c4d3bc10522d955e2"><iframe lazy-loadable="true" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bnvnBwP9sTo?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span><p>Spade developed the idea through a nonprofit called the Urban Death Project and has now started a small business, <a href="https://www.recompose.life/" target="_blank">Recompose</a>. She hopes to open the country's first "organic reduction" funeral home, <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/washington-becomes-first-state-to-legalize-human-composting/" target="_blank">The Seattle Times reported</a>.<br></p><p>"I feel so happy," Spade told The Seattle Times. "I can't believe we've come all this way, but here we are."</p><p>Spade and her colleagues place a body in a steel container filled with alfalfa, wood chips and straw and let it sit for around 30 days, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-48359571" target="_blank">BBC News explained</a>. At the end of that period, the body decomposes into two wheelbarrows of soil that can be used to plant flowers or trees.</p>
<div id="c023b" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="ZFUH7O1576662552"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1131105568683204609" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">How to compost a human body: @AFPgraphics takes a look at the process
Washington on Tuesday became the first US st… https://t.co/G15xHGn608</div> — AFP news agency (@AFP news agency)<a href="https://twitter.com/AFP/statuses/1131105568683204609">1558511557.0</a></blockquote></div><p>Washington State University soil scientist Lynne Carpenter-Boggs helped run a test of the process in 2018 with the remains of six terminally ill volunteers who supported the project. She found that the soil met all federal and state safety standards for pollutants like metals, The Seattle Times reported.</p><p><a href="https://peoplesmemorial.org/aboutpma/our_history.html" target="_blank">People's Memorial Association</a> Executive Director Nora Menkin, who attended the signing with around 20 supporters of the bill, said that Inslee seemed excited about the new law.</p><p>"Inslee congratulated Katrina pretty effusively," Menkin told The Seattle Times.</p><p>Traditional burials have a number of ecological drawbacks, as <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/could-funeral-future-help-heal-environment-180957953/" target="_blank">The Smithsonian explained</a>:</p><blockquote>Each after-death action comes with its own set of environmental impacts, from embalming chemicals <a href="http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/arsenic-and-old-graves-civil-war-era-cemeteries-may-be-leaking-toxins-180957115/" target="_blank">that leach into groundwater</a> to transportation emissions. Many cremation facilities lack modern filtration systems and <a href="http://faculty.virginia.edu/metals/cases/huffman1.html" target="_blank">spew carbon dioxide and mercury</a> into the atmosphere. Cemeteries themselves carry an environmental cost: Many depend on fertilizers and large amounts of water to maintain that clipped, mowed look.</blockquote><p>Washington already has "green" cemeteries where people can be buried without embalming, coffins or headstones. Spade's process is more like a green alternative to cremation, The Seattle Times said.</p><p>"I think this is great," <a href="https://funerals.org/" target="_blank">Funeral Consumers Alliance</a> Director Joshua Slocum told The Seattle Times. "In this country, we have a massively dysfunctional relationship with death, which does not make good principles for public policy. Disposition of the dead, despite our huge emotional associations with it, is not — except in very rare cases — a matter of public health and public safety. It's a real tough thing for people to get their minds around, and a lot of our state laws stand in the way of people returning to simple, natural, uncomplicated, inexpensive ways of doing things."</p><p>Menkin said she knew of people in Massachusetts and Michigan who now wanted to bring similar bills to their states.</p>
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