For most Americans, there are two main choices after death: burial or cremation. But now people in Washington State have a third legal option: They can have their bodies turned into soil.

Gov. Jay Inslee signed legislation on Wednesday allowing the practice of “aboveground decomposition,” making Washington the first state in the nation — and likely the first place in the world, legal experts said — to explicitly allow human remains to become compost.

“Washington is progressive when it comes to the environment and death care,” said Katrina Spade, the founder of a Seattle company that is pioneering the method and a main advocate of the legislation, which she proposed after writing a master’s thesis on urban burial as a graduate student in architecture.

Washington’s new law, which takes effect in May 2020, will allow 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 similar process to compost the bodies of livestock.