Every state in America except one gives only two main choices after death: burial or cremation. Washington State is the exception with a recently added third legal option: they can have their bodies turned into soil. Gov. Jay Inslee just signed legislation allowing the practice of “aboveground decomposition”. This move has likely made Washington the first place in the world, legal experts say, to explicitly allow human remains to become compost.

The new law will be in effect as of May 2020. It allows the practice of bodies to be placed in a receptacle, along with organic material like wood chips and straw, to help speed up the natural transition of human remains into soil. Farmers use a process similar to this to compost the bodies of livestock.

Katrina Spade, the founder of a Seattle company that is pioneering the method, said:

“Washington is progressive when it comes to the environment and death care.”

Spade is a main advocate of the legislation, which she proposed after writing a master’s thesis on urban burial as a graduate student in architecture. Her company, Recompose, will be able to turn bodies into compost and return the soil to loved ones to be spread on a garden or to help grow a tree, just as people can spread cremated ashes. It will cost around $5,000 which is less than an elaborate burial service in many places, but more than the most basic cremations. She plans on having 20 to 25 steel vessels ready for human composting by late 2020.

The process has been tested and proven to work well. A study was conducted by Washington State University in 2018 where the remains of six terminally ill people were put through the system. The people had donated their bodies to the research cause before their death. Their bodies were put in a rotating container and wrapped in organic materials like alfalfa, then bathed in air warmed by microbes.

After just approximately 4 weeks the bodies decomposed producing about one cubic yard of soil per person. Soil scientist, Lynne Carpenter-Boggs from Washington State University described the results as a “clean, rich, odorless soil that passed all federal and state safety guidelines for potentially hazardous pathogens and pollutants such as metals.”

Ancient Ways Returning

Composting is an ancient alternative to burial, but modern times has brought about new traditions that involve the necessity to preserve a body. However, these new means of disposing of human remains are essentially not sustainable. Burials require a lot of land, something that is increasingly scarce, primarily in cities. Then there’s cremation, which produces significant greenhouse gases. According to the New York Times, “some studies have shown that the energy used to cremate one body is the same as the monthly home-energy demands of an average American.”

Karla Rothstein, an architect and the director of DeathLab, a research group of architects, scientists and theologians at Columbia University that studies the burial-space problem in cities, said:

“I think it’s terrific to open up alternatives, so people have additional choices that are both honest and elegant.”

Environmental Benefit

Seeing how Gov. Jay Inslee, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, has made environmental issues a focus of his campaign, this new law of aboveground decomposition fits perfectly in his agenda. Advocates are calling it “attractive for ecological and financial reasons” because there is no coffin, no chemicals and none of the fossil fuels necessary for cremation. In addition, there is no need for a costly cemetery plot.

The law also allows the option of liquid cremation, also known as alkaline hydrolysis. This process, legal in 19 other states already, involves the use of heat, pressure, water, and chemicals like lye to dissolve the body leaving behind only bone fragments and a sterile liquid.

Washington already has several “green” cemeteries, where people can be buried without embalming, caskets or headstones so aboveground decomposition isn’t as strange or far fetched as it sounds.

Recompose explains on its website: